Britain has always relished the idea of a national emergency. Will that change now? | Andy Beckett

Since the second world war, we’ve overloaded on dystopian fantasies. We may not want to experience another for a while

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Britain sees itself as a stable country, and also as one that’s good in a crisis. So it has mixed feelings about national emergencies: it dreads them, understandably, but a corner of the national psyche is fascinated by them – and even sometimes relishes them. This ambivalence has haunted our culture and politics since the end of Britain’s last great, successfully navigated national emergency: the second world war.

Since 1945, British or British-set novels, films, speculative documentaries and television dramas have repeatedly imagined the suspension of everyday life in the face of catastrophes, from economic collapse to social breakdown, environmental disaster to nuclear war. From the horror movie shocks of the 2002 film 28 Days Later to the heartbreaking delicacy of Raymond Briggs’ 1982 anti-nuclear graphic novel When the Wind Blows, Britain has been good at scaring itself about the future.

Related: Why the cruel myth of the 'blitz spirit' is no model for how to fight coronavirus | Richard Overy

Genuine national emergencies, we are now learning, can be drawn-out, hugely dangerous and utterly disorientating

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Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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