1956, crammed with events of far-reaching import, was the year of Eden and Mollet, of Khrushchev and the Twentieth Party Congress; of Budapest and Suez. It was the year that Chancellor Macmillan shocked an inflationary Britain by imposing the highest bank rate in a generation — all of 5½ per cent; and it was the last year that France and Britain would be able to strut the world stage wearing morality play masks as "Great Powers".

XREF: Plausibly connects to postwar decolonization and the decline of European empires literature.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 458