Falkland War

The Battle of Coronel, off the coast of Chile, was a triumph for German Admiral von Spee and the first defeat of the British navy for a hundred years. The retaliatory strike was instigated six weeks later by Admiral Fisher, who sent two large battlecruisers, HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible, to the South Atlantic to restore British supremacy.

This book explores alternatives to realist, triumphalist, and heroic representations of war in British film and television. Focusing on the period between the Suez Crisis of 1956 and the Falkland War but offering connections to the moment of Brexit, it argues that the “lost continent” of existential, satirical, simulated, and abstractly traumatic war stories is as central to understanding Britain’s martial history as the mainstream inheritance.