{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.035036496350364967, 'fraction_numerical': 0.01167883211678832, 'mean_word_length': 5.18018018018018, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Literature and the Munich Crisis

The upheaval, moral self-questioning and uncertainty into which the Munich negotiations and settlement of September 1938 threw the British nation are examined in a series of now almost totally forgotten works which constitute the genre of the ‘Munich Crisis novel’. These are then related to better known post-Munich writings by, among others, Forster, Woolf, Orwell, MacNeice and Patrick Hamilton. A range of reactions to the crisis – pro- and anti-appeasement, pacifism, anxiety over air bombardment, paralysis, dilemma – thus emerge as components of what Forster analysed as ‘the 1939 State’, and which this article substantiates in greater detail.