Shepperton Babylon

Shepperton Babylon

Author: Matthew Sweet

Publisher: Gardners Books

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780571212989

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A history of British movies which includes the scandals, the suicides, the immolations and the contract killings. It is the product of thousands of conversations with veteran film-makers.


Selected Nonfiction, 1962-2007

Selected Nonfiction, 1962-2007

Author: J. G. Ballard

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2023-10-24

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0262048329

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J. G. Ballard’s collected nonfiction from 1962 to 2007, mapping the cultural obsessions, experiences, and insights of one of the most original minds of his generation. J. G. Ballard was a colossal figure in English literature and an imaginative force of the twentieth century. Alongside seminal novels—from the notorious Crash (1973) to the semi-autobiographical Empire of the Sun (1984)—Ballard was a sought-after reviewer and commentator, publishing journalism, memoir, and cultural criticism in a variety of forms. The Selected Nonfiction of J. G. Ballard collects the most significant short nonfiction of Ballard’s fifty-year career, extending the range of the only previous collection of his nonfiction, A User’s Guide to the Millennium (1996), which selected essays and reviews published between 1962 and 1995. A decade on from Ballard’s death in 2009, a new generation of readers needs a new collection. In the period following A User’s Guide, Ballard’s writing addressed 9/11, British politics from New Labour onward, and what he termed “the rise of soft fascism”—a diagnosis that maintains its relevance amid a shift toward right populism in European and US politics. Beautifully edited by Ballard scholar and novelist Mark Blacklock, this volume includes Ballard’s editorials and manifestos; commentaries on his own work; commentaries on the work of others; reviews; and more. Above all, it makes the case for the currency of Ballard’s work at a contemporary juncture at which so many of his diagnoses concerning the media and politics have become apparent.


Name Dropping

Name Dropping

Author: Philip Gooden

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2008-02-19

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780312377397

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Guide to the better known or more intriguing of terms from figures in politics, sports, and the arts as well as history and the classics. Pretentiousness Index ranks items on the spectrum from familiarity to obscurity.


Jerusalem

Jerusalem

Author: Jason Whittaker

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-07-14

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 019284587X

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The stanzas beginning, 'And did those feet' are among the most famous works written by the Romantic poet and artist, William Blake. Set to music by Hubert Parry in 1916 and renamed, 'Jerusalem', this hymn has become an emblem of Englishness in the past century, and is regularly invoked at sporting events, public and private ceremonies, and, of course, as part of Last Night of the Proms. Yet when Blake first engraved his lines in his epic work, Milton a Poem, he had been tried for sedition. Likewise, although Parry was commissioned to compose his music as part of the war effort by the organization Fight for Right, he soon removed permission for that group to perform his hymn and instead gave the copyright to the women's suffrage movement. 'Jerusalem', then, is a much more contested vision of England's green and pleasant land than is often assumed. This book traces the history of the poem and the music from Blake's original verses, written in Felpham, via the turmoil of the First and Second World Wars, its recording history in the late twentieth century, and its use in political controversies such as the 2016 Brexit vote. An anthem for both the left and the right, Blake's own vision of what it meant to build Jerusalem in England is both strange and familiar to many who invoke it. As such, this book explores the deep complexities of what Englishness means into the twenty-first century.


The Man Who Got Carter

The Man Who Got Carter

Author: Andrew Spicer

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2013-10-24

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 0857734539

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Michael Klinger was the most successful indpendent producer in the British film industry over a 20 year period from 1960 to 1980, responsible for 32 films, including classics such as Repulsion (1965) and Get Carter (1971). Despite working with many famous figures- including actors Michael Caine, Peter Finch, Lee Marvin, Roger Moore, Mickey Rooney and Susannah York; directors Claude Chabrol,Mike Hodges and Roman Polanski and author Wilbur Smith- Klinger's contribution to British cinema has been almost largely ignored. This definitive book on Micheal Klinger, largely based on his previously unseen personal papers, examines his origins in Sixties Soho 'sexploitation' cinema and 'shockumentaries' through to major international productions including Gold (1974) and Shout at the Devil (1976). It reveals how Klinger deftly combined commercial product-the hugely popular 'Confessions' series (1974-78)- with artistic, experimental cinema that nurtured young talent, including Polanski and Hodges, Peter Colinson, Alastair Reid, Linda Hayden and Moshe Mizrahi, the Israeli director of Rachel's Man (1975). Klinger's career is contextualised through a reassessment of the British film industry during a period of unprecedented change and volatility as well as highlighting the importance of his Jewishness. The Man Who Got Carter offers a detailed analysis of the essential but often misunderstood role played by the producer.


No Way Out

No Way Out

Author: Isadore Ryan

Publisher: Mercier Press Ltd

Published: 2017-07-14

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1781174881

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The experiences of the Irish in France during the war were overshadowed by the threat of internment or destitution. Up to 2,000 Irish people were stuck in occupied France after the defeat by Nazi Germany in June 1940. This population consisted largely of governesses and members of religious orders, but also the likes of Samuel Beckett, as well as a few individuals who managed to find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up in internment camps (or worse). The book examines the engagement of the Irish in various forms of resistance. It also reveals that the attitude of some of the Irish towards the German occupiers was not always as clear-cut as politically correct discourse would like to suggest.There are fascinating revelations, most notably that Ireland’s diplomatic representative in Paris sold quantities of wine to Hermann Göring; that Irish passports were given out very liberally (including to a convicted British rapist); that, in the early part of the war, some Irish ended up in internment camps in France and, through the slowness of the Irish authorities to intervene, were subsequently sent to concentration camps in Germany; and that a couple of Irish people faced criminal proceedings in France after the Liberation because of their wartime dealings with the Germans.


Men, Masculinity and the Beatles

Men, Masculinity and the Beatles

Author: Martin King

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-22

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1317097475

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Drawing on methodologies and approaches from media and cultural studies, sociology, social history and the study of popular music, this book outlines the development of the study of men and masculinities, and explores the role of cultural texts in bringing about social change. It is against this backdrop that The Beatles, as a cultural phenomenon, are set, and their four live action films, spanning the years 1964-1970, are examined as texts through which to read changing representations of men and masculinity in 'the Sixties'. Dr Martin King considers ideas about a male revolt predating second-wave feminism, The Beatles as inheritors of the possibilities of the 1950s and The Beatles' emergence as men of ideas: a global cultural phenomenon that transgressed boundaries and changed expectations about the role of popular artists in society. King further explores the chosen Beatle texts to examine discourses of masculinity at work within them. What emerges is the discovery of discourses around resistance, non-conformity, feminized appearance, pre-metrosexuality, the male star as object of desire, and the emergence of The Beatles themselves as a text that reflected the radical diversity of a period of rapid social change. King draws valuable conclusions about the legacy of these discourses and their impact in subsequent decades.


Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor

Author: Ellis Cashmore

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2016-02-25

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 1628920688

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The first volume to examine the iconic Elizabeth Taylor in this light, Elizabeth Taylor: A Private Life for Public Consumption paints Taylor as the seminal representation of “celebrity.” A figure of enormous charisma and cultural sway, she intrigued a global audience with her marriages and extra-marital improprieties, as well as her extravagant jewelry, her never-ending illnesses, her dependency on alcohol, and her perplexing friendship with Michael Jackson. Despite her continued world-renown, however, most people would be hard-pressed to name even three of her films, though she made over seventy. Ellis Cashmore traces our modern, hyperactive celebrity culture back to a single instant in Taylor's life: the publicizing of her scandalous affair with Richard Burton by photographer Marcelo Geppetti in 1962, which announced the arrival of a new generation of predatory photojournalists and, along with them, a strange conflation between the public and private lives of celebrities. Taylor's life and public reception, Cashmore reveals, epitomizes the modern phenomenon of “celebrity.”


From Silent Film Idol to Superman

From Silent Film Idol to Superman

Author: Jonathan Croall

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2023-06-02

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1476648816

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A popular romantic actor with a fan club rivalling that of Ivor Novello, John Stuart was frequently mobbed by his adoring fans. He starred in films by Alfred Hitchcock and G.W. Pabst, played opposite British stars such as Madeleine Carroll, Fay Compton, Gracie Fields, and German actor Conrad Veidt, and was also the first actor to ever speak on screen in Britain. Yet despite a film career lasting six decades and 172 films, his name and achievement are little known today. With access to Stuart's private archive, his surviving films, press cuttings, film reviews, interviews, profiles, features, and gossip columns, his son Jonathan Croall presents a detailed account of an actor who made a significant contribution to the British film industry of the 20th century.


The British Boxing Film

The British Boxing Film

Author: Stephen Glynn

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-08-20

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 3030742105

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This book constitutes the first full volume dedicated to an academic analysis of the sport of boxing as depicted in British film. Through close textual analysis, production and reception histories and readings that establish social, cultural and political contexts, the book explores the ways in which prizefighters, amateur boxers, managers and supporters (from Regency gentry to East End gangsters) are represented on the British screen. Exploring a complex and controversial sport, it addresses not only the pain-versus-reward dilemma that boxing necessarily engenders, but also the frequently censorious attitude of those in authority, with boxing’s social development facilitating a wider study around issues of class, gender and race, latterly contesting the whole notion of ‘Britishness’. Varying in scope from Northern circuit comedies to London-based ‘ladsploitation’ films, from auteur entries by Alfred Hitchcock to programme fillers by E.J. Fancey, the boxing film also serves as a prism through which one can trace major historical shifts in the British film industry.