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Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English, University of Sydney

'This is the way the world ends': Nevil Shute's On the Beach warned us of nuclear annihilation. It's still a hot-button issue

TS Eliot United States Ava Gardner Cormac McCarthy Gregory Peck Stanley Kramer Australia Sydney Theatre Company the Sydney Theatre Company
A 1946 nuclear weapon test by the US military at Bikini Atoll, Micronesia. rawpixel

One of the most haunting poems of the 20th century, T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men (1925), concludes:

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

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