''The Old Men at the Zoo'' is a novel written by

Angus Wilson Sir Angus Frank Johnstone-Wilson, CBE (11 August 191331 May 1991) was an English novelist and short story writer. He was one of England's first openly gay authors. He was awarded the 1958 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for '' The Middle Age o ...

, first published in 1961 by

Secker and Warburg Harvill Secker is a British publishing company formed in 2005 from the merger of Secker & Warburg and the Harvill Press. History Secker & Warburg Secker & Warburg was formed in 1935 from a takeover of Martin Secker, which was in receivership, ...

and by Penguin books in 1964. It was adapted, with many changes—nuclear bombing of London, not present in the novel, is added—into a 1983

BBC Television BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios from 193 ...

serial by the scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin. The book deals with events before a nuclear attack on

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

during a (presumably) limited

nuclear war Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a theoretical military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear wa ...

, which results in the imposition of a later

post-apocalyptic Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; ast ...

pan-European

dystopia A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...

n dictatorship, until rescue arrives for the prisoners at the zoo, transformed into a concentration camp.

References

1961 British novels 1961 science fiction novels BBC Television shows Novels by Angus Wilson British novels adapted into television shows Television shows based on British novels British post-apocalyptic novels Secker & Warburg books 1983 in British television 1980s British drama television series English-language television shows Post-apocalyptic television series {{1960s-sf-novel-stub