Literature, Cultural and Media Studies

James Graham is one of the UK's leading dramatists, a multi-award-winning writer who for almost 20 years has analysed and articulated concepts of power and authority in modern British society. James Graham: State of the Nation Playwright is the first full-length assessment of the writer's output, applying core thematic areas - Democracy, Anarchy, Famous Faces and Television - to understand how different power bases operate in modern society, their effectiveness and influence, and how they came to pre-eminence during the last 70 years. The book concludes with an evaluation of Graham's contribution to state-of-the-nation debates, Britain's cycles of decline and its consequences for understanding contemporary national identity.