The article gives an overview of six books of British critics (George Watson, JD Taylor, Andrzej Gashiorek, Patricia Vaugh, Malcolm Bradbury, Alan Sinfield) published in the 1990s. and reflecting, each in its own way, the direction of postwar British literature. The approaches used by critics are divided into two categories: traditional academic literary studies and cultural studies; the article proposes a methodological evaluation of each category. The critical material presented in the article can be used in class on contemporary English literature, realism transformations, modernism and postmodernism in the literature of the late twentieth century.