Ian McEwan is very much a product of the new British universities, those popularly known as "plate-glass universities" to distinguish them from the older "red-brick universities" at which writers such as Kinglsey Amis or Philip Larkin have taught or still work. Built during the 1960s, they set out to revolutionize curricula and the general structure of academic life in Great Britain. To a significant extent they succeeded, and their graduates are beginning to make a distinctive impact on the cultural life of the United Kingdom. McEwan has perhaps established a greater reputation than any of their other graduates, but the dramatist Snoo Wilson, the novelist Clive Sinclair, and the television drama producer Jonathan Powell, all alumni of the University of East Anglia, which admitted its first students only in 1963, are already well known in their respective fields.

The University of East Anglia, based at Norwich, is particularly important...