Hollywood, England

Book excerpt: 'Hollywood England' is a book of an era as much as of the cinema. The focus of Walker's commentary is American power operating on British talent as, in the sixties, for the first time British cinema achieved a truly national character.It was an era of Billy Liar and Kes, of the Beatles, musicals, the whole swinging London cycle; of directors such as Richardson, Loach and Russell and stars such as Albert Finney, Michael Caine and Julie Christie. And yet there was the irony that by the end of the decade Hollywood sustained 95% of British film making. Alexander Walker traces the change from the sober reality of post-Suez Britain to the consumer boom, and gives sharp judgements and critical appraisals on the vast variety of American and British film people who made up this extraordinary new wave.