Contemporary British and European History

A degree in Languages and Cultures is not only about language and literature: it also requires a solid grounding in history. Literature cannot be understood without its historical context, and culture is always shaped by the political, social and economic forces of its time. A student of English literature needs to understand the Industrial Revolution, the British Empire, the two World Wars and the process of decolonisation in order to make sense of the texts they study.

The twentieth century brought profound changes to Britain. The First World War killed nearly a million British soldiers and shattered the optimism of the Edwardian era. The war's impact on literature was enormous, producing the War Poets, writers such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Rupert Brooke who documented the horror and futility of industrial warfare with devastating honesty. The Second World War, from 1939 to 1945, brought aerial bombing, evacuation and the Holocaust to the consciousness of the British public and transformed the moral and political landscape of Europe.

After 1945, Britain experienced the end of its empire. India gained independence in 1947, and over the following decades dozens of British colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean became independent nations. The process of decolonisation gave rise to postcolonial literature, written by authors from formerly colonised countries who explored the legacies of empire, identity and displacement. Writers like Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie, Derek Walcott and Zadie Smith enriched the English-language literary tradition with new perspectives and voices.

The post-war period also saw the gradual construction of European unity. The European Coal and Steel Community, founded in 1951, evolved into the European Economic Community and eventually into the European Union. This project of political and economic integration has reshaped the lives of hundreds of millions of people and created a common framework for cultural exchange, academic mobility and shared values.

One of the most rewarding aspects of studying languages at university is learning to read literature as a historical document. A Victorian novel is not just a story: it is a record of a society at a particular moment in time, full of information about class, gender, religion, economics and politics. Reading literature historically, and reading history through literature, is one of the core intellectual skills developed in a humanities degree.