In 1945 Continental Europe was in ruins, Britannia on her knees. Political power had shifted to America and – in more raw and dreaded form – to Stalin’s Soviet Union. Nevertheless, there was a certain confidence that, with the benefit of an American protective shield – a necessity often treated by Britons with an envious or mocking contempt sometimes expressed pithily of GIs as ‘over-fed, over-sexed, over ’ere!’ – things would return to an improved version of a cultural and intellectual ‘Western’ normality assumed to have remained more or less in place. Now that we were rid of Hitler and Mussolini, followed by Japan’s Tojo and fellow militarists, we could set about establishing a fairer social order: better health, education, housing, better working conditions – something of the Utilitarian’s vision of an ideal society.