War Representation in British Cinema and Television

From Suez to Thatcher, and Beyond

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by Kevin M. Flanagan

Type

Studies

Subject

Countries > Great Britain

Keywords

Great Britain, war, war films, representation

Publishing date

2019

Publisher

Palgrave MacMillan

Collection

Britain and the World

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 236 pages
6 ¼ x 8 ¾ inches (16 x 22 cm)

ISBN

978-3-030-30202-3

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Book Presentation:
This book explores alternatives to realist, triumphalist, and heroic representations of war in British film and television. Focusing on the period between the Suez Crisis of 1956 and the Falkland War but offering connections to the moment of Brexit, it argues that the “lost continent” of existential, satirical, simulated, and abstractly traumatic war stories is as central to understanding Britain’s martial history as the mainstream inheritance. The book features case studies that stress the contribution of exiled or expatriate directors and outsider sensibilities, with particular emphasis on Peter Watkins, Joseph Losey, and Richard Lester. At the same time, it demonstrates concerns and stylistic emphases that continue to the present in television series and films by directors such as Lone Scherfig and Christopher Nolan. Encompassing everything from features to government information films, the book explores related trends in the British film industry, popular culture, and film criticism, while offering a sense of how these contexts contribute to historical memory.

About the Author:
Kevin M. Flanagan is Term Assistant Professor of English at George Mason University, USA. He is the editor of Ken Russell: Re-Viewing England’s Last Mannerist (2009) and has published essays in Screen, Framework, Critical Quarterly, and the Journal of British Cinema and Television, as well as in many edited collections and reference works.

Press Reviews:
"Kevin Flanagan’s new book evokes the ‘pleasure culture of war’ that was such a facet of postwar Britain, and celebrates a counter-tradition of film and television works that subverted it. Conversant with the by-ways of cultural history, he treats films not as islands but as part of a complex and complexly determined web of intersections, attending both to the political big picture and to the minutiae of production histories. Along the way he salutes the real, anti-realist British new wave of Richard Lester, Joseph Losey, and Peter Watkins." (Henry K. Miller, University of Reading)

See the publisher website: Palgrave MacMillan