Published in the early 1960s, Anger and After is one of the first major attempts to map the explosion of post-war British theatre.

John Russell Taylor traces the generation that followed the famous “Angry Young Men” movement of the 1950s — playwrights who rejected the polite drawing-room drama that had dominated British stages for decades. Writers like John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Harold Pinter, and others reshaped theatre with working-class voices, psychological tension, and stark realism.

It examines the new venues, directors, and theatrical movements emerging in London during the late 1950s and early 1960s — from the Royal Court Theatre to experimental companies challenging traditional staging and subject matter.

Today the book reads as an early guide to a turning point in modern drama, capturing the moment British theatre became sharper, stranger, and far more socially confrontational.