Milton Keynes in British culture : imagining England Milton Keynes one of post war Britains largest and most ambitious state projects has often been maligned derided mocked and dismissed in politics and in popular culture alike. By integrating the cultural reception of Milton Keynes into wider histories of British politics and popular culture this book also provides a wider history of how the backlash against state planning was achieved through the development of a mythology of the bad old days . Despite this Milton Keynes has functioned as a stubborn testament to the progressive and radical visions of a post war state a political alternative to the present which rejects nostalgic and neoliberal conservatism alike