A landmark collection of newly commissioned essays on British fiction of the last fifty years by the very best contemporary novelists, critics, and academics, including contributions from Martin Amis, P. N. Furbank, Christopher Hitchens, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Ian McEwan, Hilary Mantel, Patrick Parrinder, Elaine Showalter, James Wood, and Michael Wood. Among the topics discussed are the 'Englishness' of English comic fiction, its political conservatism, fiction and exile, Scottish fiction, the comissioning and editing of modern fiction, reviewing, the adaptation of fiction to television, genre fiction ('Ladlit', science fiction, crime fiction), and fictional form. There are also original essays on individual authors, including Christopher Isherwood, Angus Wilson, Iris Murdoch, Penelope Fitzgerald, V. S. Pritchett, V. S. Naipaul, and Salman Rushdie. A fascinating collection for anyone seriously interested in modern British fiction.