Nicholas Haeffner

Nicholas Haeffner (see also Nick Haeffner) is a former musician, whose album The Great Indoors is highly acclaimed. He is Senior Lecturer in Media Arts at London Metropolitan University where he teaches film studies and photography. He is a visiting professor at Boston University. Alfred Hitchcock is his first book, since which he has contributed a chapter on Hitchcock and Crime to the Blackwell Companion to Crime Fiction (2010). He is currently working on a study of the films of Michael Winterbottom.

Reviews of Alfred Hitchcock by Nicholas Haeffner:

'Though they may not fully appreciate the skill and thoughtfulness of Haeffner's synthetic approach to Hitchcock's career and cultural force, [students] will be well served in the main by Haeffner's historical and thematic approach; by the book's end they will have engaged most of the standard topics in Hitchcock study with a surprising degree of sophistication.'

Leland Poague, Iowa State University, author of The Hitchcock Reader

'There have been innumerable critical books written about Alfred Hitchcock. Some of them have been dim and shallow, others opaque and jargon-written, and still others like Nick Haeffner's book are critically penetrating, knowledgeable, and written with consummate clarity.'

Leonard Quart, Professor Emeritus

City University of New York

'As a single, succinct text to introduce Hitchcock and his films, Nicholas Haeffner's 'Alfred Hitchcock' stands out. With admirable objectivity, it draws on the vast literature about, and by, Hitchcock, to inform the reader of the way the director thought and worked and how his films are now generally seen.'

Ken Mogg, author of The Alfred Hitchcock Story and editor of The MacGuffin website

'A fascinating read...Full of so much of what I instinctively feel about the business of film making.'

Tony Grisoni, scriptwriter (previous credits include films directed by Terry Gilliam and Michael Winterbottom).

'In Alfred Hitchcock, Nicholas Haeffner sets himself the usual impossible goals for a short critical study on a major film maker, attempting to provide a comprehensive introduction to Hitchcock's major British and Hollywood films that is accessible to students and general readers, sophisticated and argumentative enough to appeal to critics and professors, and alert and responsive to the vast realm of commentary an debate on Hitchcock, let alone the far reaches of Hitchcock's own work - all this in slightly more than 100 pages. Much to his credit, he has more than a little success in each of those areas and the reader of this book will come away with much solid information about Hitchcock's life, career and persona, a good grounding in what Hitchcock had to say about his approach to film making and a useful exposure to some of the key issues in Hitchcock criticism.'

Sidney Gottlieb, Sacred Heart University, editor of Hitchcock on Hitchcock, the Hitchcock Interviews and the Hitchcock Annual.