The Routledge Companion to British Cinema History

Scholars of British film-making have mostly tended to overlook histories and cultures of producers and production, in favour of studies of genre, auteurs, time-frames and representational issues. There are of course some notable exceptions, including some very detailed accounts of the contemporary film-making landscape. But for anyone looking for a forensic history of the key movers and shakers of independent UK cinema of the last thirty or so years, the most useful primary sources are likely to be trade press documentation or biographies and memoirs from key protagonists. As it happens, many of the latter published accounts are as eye-opening as they are gripping, casting light on the extraordinary individuals and developments behind the scenes of some of the most critically and commercial (but also some of the most excoriated and financially ruinous) works of British cinema since the 1980s.