Twenty British films: A guided tour

This book examines twenty major British films from a 70-year time span, offering a lively account of what has made them valuable and provocative over many viewings. It aims both to communicate a critical enthusiasm and to stimulate readers, large numbers of whom will know and value these films, many of them classics of their kind. The author's personal engagement with such titles as The Lady Vanishes, Brief Encounter and Four Weddings and a Funeral will be likely to call up the readers' own responses.

Each film focuses on a particular strength significant in the history of British cinema. This may, for instance, reflect its strong ties with literature, or represent a high spot in British comedy or some other genre in which it has excelled, or it could be a matter of rescuing a 'B' film from obscurity and critical condescension, or of celebrating a star performance.

There will inevitably be something strongly personal about any such choice, and any defence of that choice. These are films that have stayed in the mind, when hundreds of others are forgotten. They speak of a rich national cinema too often undervalued as a poor relation of Hollywood. This book, then, has an element of celebration, but it also examines these twenty films rigorously both in their contexts and as individual texts. The book will be useful to anyone studying these films but above all it is to be accessible to a much wider audience with an interest in and affection for British film.