The July 20 plot: reading news as myth in the imagining of the British nation

This paper analyses foreign news articles that appeared in three London newspapers during the Second World War, covering 'The July 20 Plot', an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in 1944. The analysis is supported by reading the news articles as an 'other world' myth, through which characteristics of their own nation, imagined by Britons, was observed as existing in opposition to that of the Germany portrayed. International news is thus solidified as a source of historical enquiry, as well as a site of discourse that can be examined as the expression of mythological knowledge that typifies an imagined national community.