National Heroes - Softcover

Walker, Alexander

Softcover

ISBN 10: 075285707X ISBN 13: 9780752857077

Publisher: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ), 2005

Synopsis

Like HOLLYWOOD ENGLAND, NATIONAL HEROES has social change as well as mass entertainment as its focus. It picks up the story in the 'hangover years' of the early seventies, and takes it into the so-called 'renaissance era' of the eighties, showing the immense talent underpinning the search for profit and power. Based on his outstanding knowledge of films and their makers, and many hours of interviews with the key players, Walker analyses the transition from the permissive society to one of increasing constraints. He discusses the violent cinema of GET CARTER and THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY, the taxation that drove directors, producers and stars out of Britain, and reveals what David Puttnam was really thinking when CHARIOTS OF FIRE won the Oscars. Including sharp critical appraisals of a host of films and such talents as Glenda Jackson, John Hurt, Monty Python and many more, NATIONAL HEROES is a classic work on the British film industry in the seventies and eighties.

About this title

About the Author

Alexander Walker is the author of over twenty books about the cinema and its stars, including bestselling biographies of Elizabeth Taylor, Vivien Leigh, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Peter Sellers and Audrey Hepburn. He has also written standard works on the coming of the Talkies, a monograph on Stanley Kubrick, and the fullest account to date of the British film industr from 1960 to 1985. He has been the London "Evening Standard's" influential film critic since 1960 and has been named "Critic of the Year" three times in the British Press Awards. A prolific broadcaster on television and radio, he wrote and narrated four series of "Film Star" for the BBC. Alexander Walker was born in Ireland, and educated there, on the Continent and in the United States.

Edition details

• Publisher: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 075285707X
• ISBN 13: 9780752857077
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304