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This is the first in-depth study of post-war female religious life. Rooted in the lived experiences of women religious in Britain, it explores British modernity, the social movements of the long 1960s and the Second Vatican Council, while acknowledging transnational relationships and global interconnectivities within and across national divides.

<p>1 Introduction<br>2 Before the Council: post-war modernity and religious vocations<br>3 The modern girl and religious life<br>4 Governance, authority and ‘1968’<br>5 Relationships, generation discourse and the ‘turn to self’<br>6 The world in the cloister and the nun in the world <br>7 Local and global: changing ministries <br>8 Becoming a woman<br>9 Conclusion<br>Index</p>

Carmen M. Mangion is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Birkbeck, University of London

<p>'Carmen Mangion's study is an original addition to the social and cultural history of post-war Britain. Deploying a wide range of source materials, <i>Catholic nuns and sisters in a secular age</i> provides us with a rich understanding of the impact that social changes and attitudinal shifts had on convent cultures – and in the process challenges a number of widely held beliefs about Catholic women religious in the modern era.'<br> Susan O'Brien, St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge<br><br>'This is an outstanding book that makes a highly significant contribution not only to the history of nuns and religious sisters in post-war Britain, but to the international history of Catholicism and the social and cultural history of the United Kingdom in the second half of the twentieth century.'<br> Susannah Riordan, University College Dublin<br><br> This book investigates the experiences of women religious in Britain from 1945 to 1990, identifying how communities and individual lives were influenced by both religious and secular social movements. Drawing on interviews with eighty women at nine different institutions, it examines youth culture, participatory democracy, the ‘turn to self’, post-war modernity, the voluntary sector and the women’s movement. Though rooted in the experiences of women religious in Britain, it probes the transnational relationships and global interconnectivities between women religious across national divides, enriching our understanding of the interactions between religious bodies and society at large and shedding light on the evolving role of the Church in the twentieth century.</p>