THERE ARE SOME ALTERNATIVES Remembering 1980S Britain in Contemporary British Literature

THERE ARE SOME ALTERNATIVES Remembering 1980s Britain in contemporary British literature By Ella Reilly A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English Literature Victoria University of Wellington Te Whare Wānanga o te Ūpoko o te Ika a Māui 2017 ii Contents Contents ........................................................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................................... iii Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................ iv List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................... v Introduction: “The 80s are going on for ever” ....................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Spectres of heritage in The Line of Beauty ............................................................................. 27 Chapter 2: Occulting nostalgia in GB84 ................................................................................................. 46 Chapter 3: Postimperial melancholic nationalism in Black Swan Green .............................................. 66 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................. 79 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................................ 81 iii Acknowledgements Thank you to Dougal McNeill for your generous advice, guidance and supervision throughout this thesis. Thank you to friends, colleagues, flatmates, and team mates for your support, understanding and welcome distractions at opportune moments. Thank you Justyne, Sam and Rebekah for your friendship, wit and support over the last year. Thank you Allanah, Liv, and Robert for reading through parts of this thesis and offering helpful insights, suggestions and inside jokes. Last but by no means least, thank you to Mum, Dad, and Kit for your support and love. iv Abstract This thesis explores how the 1980s haunt contemporary British literature. Cognizant of a trend of cultural production (literary, film, television, music) interested in this period since the beginning of the twenty-first century, this thesis focuses on three historical novels by three critically acclaimed authors: Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, David Peace’s GB84 (both 2004) and David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green (2006). It reads these historical novels as memory texts conditioned both by their moment of publication (mid-2000s Britain under the premiership of Tony Blair) and the moments of the 1980s that they remember (1980s Britain under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher). These novels are oriented around different facets of the 1980s (the high-Tory world, the 1984-85 miners’ strike and the Falklands War respectively) and so, read together, offer a cumulative portrait of the decade. However, each novel is read on its own terms for its specific interests in the public aspects of the 1980s. This thesis is thus divided into three chapters, with each taking a different memory discourse or mode as its analytical approach, as invited by the particularities of the novel it examines. The Line of Beauty is read in terms of the spectral presence of heritage; GB84 in terms of occulted and occulting nostalgia; Black Swan Green in terms of the media and postcolonial melancholia. v List of Figures Figure 1: Images used to introduce sections of GB84 ......................................................................... 51 Figure 2: Pages 312-313 of GB84 ............................................................................................................ 57 1 Introduction “The 80s are going on for ever” He found himself yearning to know of their affairs, their successes, the novels and the new ideas that the few who remembered him might say he never knew, he never lived to find out. It was the morning’s vision of the empty street, but projected far forward, into afternoons like this one decades hence, in the absent hum of their own business. (The Line of Beauty 501) Her two little princes dancing by their necks from her apron strings, and she looks down at the long march of labour halted here before her and says, Awake! Awake! This is England, Your England – and the Year is Zero. (GB84 462) ‘It’ll be all right,’ Julia’s gentleness makes it worse, ‘in the end, Jace.’ ‘It doesn’t feel very all right.’ ‘That’s because it’s not the end.’ (Black Swan Green 371) Did the 1980s end? How confidently can we answer this question? Re-presenting stories of the 1980s, as with any period with a presence in living memory, invites reaction and critique from those who were there. A recent example is Brief Encounters, the 2016 ITV comedy-drama set in Sheffield in 1982, loosely based on Jacqueline Gold’s account of the early days of lingerie and sex toy chain shop Ann Summers. It sparked New Statesman’s Rachel Cooke (who hails from Sheffield) to comment in an otherwise glowing review that, thanks to her “insider knowledge”, she is attune to the “mistakes” made by the series’ makers. For instance, “Brian the butcher would not have called his evening meal ‘dinner’”. However, perhaps more damning with respect to the series’ plot development, Cooke notes that Steph, the “perplexingly well spoken” former cleaner who hopes to earn some extra money from hosting ‘knicker parties’, is rendered [S]o prudish that she can barely bring herself to touch a sock-style ‘marital aid’ … let alone the cucumber-sized baton that is the Stallion vibrator. Really? I don’t think so. In 1984 I had a job in a Sheffield branch of Boots and all anyone talked about … was sex. (Cooke). Prudishness aside, what is also notable in the series is the previous work of its actors. Don Gilet, who in Brief Encounters plays the husband of one of the Ann Summers reps, also appeared in the 2 2006 BBC adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s 2004 Man Booker Prize winner The Line of Beauty as protagonist Nick Guest’s first lover Leo Charles. What we can see here is the fringe of a web of texts concerned with the 1980s. We might surmise, as The Line of Beauty’s Catherine Fedden does, that “the 80s are going on for ever” (393). This thesis explores the ways in which the 1980s haunt contemporary British literature. Conscious of the trend of cultural production interested in this period since the beginning of the twenty-first century, my thesis is focused on three historical novels by three critically acclaimed authors: Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, David Peace’s GB84 (both 2004) and David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green (2006). I read these historical novels as memory texts conditioned both by their moment of publication (mid-2000s Britain under the premiership of Tony Blair) and the moments of the 1980s that they remember (1980s Britain under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher). These novels are oriented around different facets of the 1980s: the high- Tory world, the 1984-85 miners’ strike and the Falklands War respectively. Read together, these novels offer a cumulative portrait of the decade. These novels are not the only recent cultural productions concerned with the 1980s. The decade has seen something of a revival of interest from the forms of literature, film, television and music, particularly since the beginning of the twenty-first century. As David James comments, it would seem that “a key aspect of the 2000s is thus captured by its creative … re- entry into past decades” (335). Literary representations of the 1980s include Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000), Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty (2004), David Peace’s GB84 (2004), 1980 (2001) and 1983 (2002) (the latter two being the final novels of Peace’s Red Riding quartet), David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green (2006), Max Schaefer’s Children of the Sun (2010), Cathi Unsworth’s The Singer (2008) and Weirdo (2012), the eponymous story of Hilary Mantel’s short story collection The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (2013), and Zadie Smith’s Swing Time (2016). In film, the 1980s is the central period for Billy Elliot (2004), This is England (2006), The History Boys (2006, adapted from Alan Bennett’s play of the same name), The Iron Lady (2011), documentary film Still the Enemy Within (2014), Pride (2014). In television, aside from The Line of Beauty and Brief Encounters, representations include the I Love the 1980s series (2001), Ashes to Ashes (2008-2010), and the follow-ups to the This is England film: This is England ’86 (2010) and This is England ’90 (2015)1. Even the special edition of 1980s sitcom Blackadder, Blackadder: Back and Forth (1999), in its opening montage of images asserting the prominence of its titular fictional figure throughout 1 I include This is England ’90 in this list as it registers the transition from the Thatcher 1980s to the John Major years of the 1990s. 3 Britain’s history, includes Rowan Atkinson’s character holding his nose next to Margaret Thatcher, who stands with her arms aloft in a victory pose. What can we draw from the fact that a cluster of texts has emerged in the first decade of the twenty-first

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