“Improbabilities abound”: Daphne du Maurier’s Rule Britannia and the Speculative Political Future

Abstract

Contextualising Daphne du Maurier’s Rule Britannia (1970) in what I tentatively identify as a speculative books boom of the late 1960s and 1970s, this paper posits that speculative fiction as a literary category is both a broad and hybrid one, but one that is often used synonymously with science fiction. Following this observation, this paper explores the effects of du Maurier’s amalgamation of genres and intertextual resonances on the mood of suspicion, unease and desolation that pervades this speculative work. This article explores how Rule Britannia‘s uneasy mood speaks to an equally troubled cultural moment for Britain. Rule Britannia interrogates cultural and national symbols at a moment of concentrated cultural and national anxiety. Examining what it means for du Maurier to write an invasion narrative for Britain in 1972, when British identity is at a cultural and historical crossroads, this paper argues that du Maurier takes a hard look at Britain in its post-war context, drawing attention to its perceived failings, its weakened global status and its shifting national identity. Du Maurier imagines a coloniser-turned-colonised invasion narrative for a previously powerful country coming to terms with post-war economic strife, bankruptcy, Cold War global tensions and the process of decolonisation.