McEwan had long wanted to write a novel about the 1970s, a formative period in his life he refers to as "the time of my life." For the United Kingdom it was a turbulent period, with striking miners, energy crisis, escalation of the conflict over Northern Ireland, repeated states of emergency and several shifts of government. It was also the period of the Cold War, when Western governments were trying to win the war of ideas against a highly radicalised intelligentsia. Operation Sweet Tooth is entirely fictional, but the story is inspired by the actual scandal affecting the conservative literary magazine "Encounter", which in 1967 was revealed to have received covert funding from the CIA. McEwan uses this back-story to explore the relationship between artist and government, and the need for literature to remain independent. According to McEwan, the problem was not the anti-Communist crusade itself, but the secrecy with which it was conducted. "All that's really required is that anything the state does in relation to the arts is laid on the table where we can see it."