The Two Cultures Controversy
“Widescreen, wrap-around cultural history of postwar Britain.” — John Toye, Oxford
During the 1960s, the scientist-turned-novelist C. P. Snow clashed with the literary critic F. R. Leavis over the humanities and sciences. But why did this familiar subject, discussed since the Victorians, ignite such ferocious controversy at this particular moment?
The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature, and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain (Cambridge, 2009) shows how a cliché about “two cultures” became invested with rival accounts of England's past, the Cold War present, and Africa's future. Recasting this disciplinary dispute as an ideological conflict, one that pit rival forms of liberalism against one another, the book follows this divide through a series of clashes over the mission of the university, the methodology of history, the meaning of national decline, and the fate of the former British Empire.
The Two Cultures Controversy explains the workings of cultural politics during Britain’s postwar “meritocratic moment,” while also transforming our understanding of a concept still in use today.
Reviews
The Royal Historical Society named The Two Cultures Controversy proxime accessit for the Whitfield Prize, the jury saluting its “thought-provoking perspective on the ways in which we imagine cultural possibilities now.”
In Twentieth Century British History, Stefan Collini called the book “of considerable value to cultural, educational and political historians of the period, as well as of interest to a wider readership.”
For Choice, Peter Stansky wrote that “Ortolano has brought [Snow and Leavis] splendidly back to life.”
In the American Historical Review, David Coates wrote: “As I read further and further into this text, I could ever more readily hear and feel, even smell, a Britain now largely gone.”
On H-Net, Peter Mandler called The Two Cultures Controversy “an exceptionally thoughtful, and thought-provoking, work from which (truly) every modern British historian will learn something fresh and useful.”
Not everybody has an equally high tolerance for “intellectual vandalism.”
But in the English Historical Review, William Whyte wrote that this debut “announces the arrival of a very significant historian indeed.”
New editions
In 2011, The Two Cultures Controversy was released in paperback.
A Japanese translation appeared in 2019.
A Chinese translation is forthcoming.