Beyond the American century: Walter Lippmann and American grand strategy, 1943-1950

As the United States became a world Power, journalist and intellectual Walter Lippmann feared that it would become its own worst enemy. During and after the Second World War, he tried to steer the country towards coherent statecraft, to define the national interest and the limits of power, and give geopolitical expression to the role of the United States as the core of an Atlantic strategic system. But in response to world war, the Truman Doctrine, and the Korean War, he became pessimistic about the country's ability to conduct strategy effectively. In the prophetic tradition, he believed that a fatal symbiosis between America's growing strength and domestic politics led it towards crisis. Though at times ahistorical, Lippmann's concept of strategy deserves attention for its dialogue between power and identity, for its questioning of “ends” as well as means, and for its focus on the danger of self-defeating behaviour.

Changes in area and geodetic mass balance of small glaciers, polar Urals, Russia, 1950-2008

Changes in area of 30 small glaciers (mostly <1 km2) in the northern Polar Urals (67.5-68.25 °N) between 1953 and 2000 were assessed using historic aerial photography from 1953 and 1960, ASTER and panchromatic Landsat ETM+ imagery from 2000, and data from 1981 and 2008 terrestrial surveys. Changes in volume and geodetic mass balance of IGAN and Obruchev glaciers were calculated using data from terrestrial surveys in 1963 and 2008. In total, glacier area declined by 22.3 ± 3.9% in the 1953/60-2000 period. The areas of individual glaciers decreased by 4-46%. Surfaces of Obruchev and IGAN glaciers lowered by 22.5 ± 1.7 m and 14.9 ± 2.1 m. Over 45 years, geodetic mass balances of Obruchev and IGAN glaciers were -20.66 ± 2.91 and -13.54 ± 2.57 m w.e. respectively. Glacier shrinkage in the Polar Urals is related to a summer warming of 1 °C between 1953-81 and 1981-2008 and its rates are consistent with other regions of northern Asia but are higher than in Scandinavia. While glacier shrinkage intensified in the 1981-2000 period relative to 1953-81, increasing winter precipitation and shading effects slowed glacier wastage in 2000-08.

Prizes for modernity in the provinces: The Arts Council’s 1950-1951 regional playwriting competition

As part of its contribution to the 1951 Festival of Britain, the Arts Council ran what can be seen in retrospect to be an important playwriting competition. Disregarding the London stage entirely, it invited regional theatres throughout the UK to put forward nominations for new plays within their repertoire for 1950-1951. Each of the five winning plays would receive, what was then, the substantial sum of £100. Originality and innovation featured highly amongst the selection criteria, with 40 per cent of the judges’ marks being awarded for “interest of subject matter and inventiveness of treatment”. This article will assess some of the surprising outcomes of the competition and argue that it served as an important nexus point in British theatrical historiography between two key moments in post-war Britain: the first being the inauguration of the Festival of Britain in 1951, the other being the debut of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger in May 1956. The article will also argue that the Arts Council’s play competition was significant for two other reasons. By circumventing the London stage, it provides a useful tool by which to reassess the state of new writing in regional theatre at the beginning of the 1950s and to question how far received views of parochialism and conservatism held true. The paper will also put forward a case for the competition significantly anticipating the work of George Devine at the English Stage Company, which during its early years established a reputation for itself by heavily exploiting the repertoire of new plays originally commissioned by regional theatres. This article forms part of a five year funded Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project, ‘Giving Voice to the Nation: The Arts Council of Great Britain and the Development of Theatre and Performance in Britain 1945-1994’. Details of the Arts Council’s archvie, which is housed at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London can be found at http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/wid/ead/acgb/acgbf.html Keywords: Arts Council of Great Britain, regional theatre, playwriting, Festival of Britain, English Stage Company (Royal Court) , Yvonne Mitchell