This chapter studies how British culture served as a form of counter-history, revealing that George Orwell and Herbert Read visualised a naturalised cultural habitus as a safeguard against a threatening history. On the other hand, H.G. Wells envisioned a post-historical and rationally administered culture as a cure to the violent crisis of the historical present. The discussion then examines the works of Orwell, Read, Wells, Robert Graves and Ezra Pound in 1941. This is followed by a study of Virginia Woolf's Between the Acts, her posthumously published novel.

This chapter studies how British culture served as a form of counter-history, revealing that George Orwell and Herbert Read visualised a naturalised cultural habitus as a safeguard against a threatening history. On the other hand, H.G. Wells envisioned a post-historical and rationally administered culture as a cure to the violent crisis of the historical present. The discussion then examines the works of Orwell, Read, Wells, Robert Graves and Ezra Pound in 1941. This is followed by a study of Virginia Woolf's Between the Acts, her posthumously published novel.