Hollywood, England - The British Film Industry in the Sixties

Hollywood England is a book of an era as much as of the cinema, with the screen often reflecting the mood of the 'Swinging Sixties'. Alexander Walker reveals how, for the first time, British cinema achieved a truly national character, with films such as Billy Liar, Kes, the Beatles musicals and the James Bond films, and talents such as Ken Russell, Bryan Forbes, Michael Caine and Julie Christie. There was a wealth of new writers, photographers and designers - and yet, ironically, by the end of the decade Hollywood sustained ninety-five per cent of British film-making. Walker traces the change from the sober reality of post-Suez Britain to the consumer boom and the emergence of an acquisitive culture. From the permissive society and the ever-increasing drug culture, he reveals just how different the film industry of the Sixties was to anything that had gone before. Including sharp appraisals on the vast variety of American and British film people who made up this new era, Hollywood England is a remarkable work on an extraordinary period in British cinema.