Although his film career extended from the early days of sound to the British New Wave and beyond, Sir John Mills is nonetheless remembered as the archetypal hero of the Second World War. Regarded as an English 'everyman', his performances crossed the class divide and, in his easy transition from below decks to above, he came to represent a newly democratic masculine ideal.

But what was this exemplary masculinity and what became of it in the aftermath of war? "John Mills and British Cinema" asks how was it possible for an actor to embody national identity and, by exploring the cultural contexts in which Mills and the nation became synonymous, the book offers a new perspective on 40 years of cinema and social change. Through detailed analysis of a wide range of classic British films, "John Mills and British Cinema" exposes the shifting constructions of 'national' masculinity, arguing that the screen persona of the actor is a fundamental, and often overlooked, dimension of British cinema.

Features

* Provides the first critical examination of the film career of Sir John Mills.

* Uses contemporary feminist and gender theories to examine the body of the actor as a crucial dimension of the film text.

* Explores the concept of a 'national cinema' from an innovative new perspective.

* Provides stimulating new readings of key British films, including "Forever England," "The Way to the Stars," "Great Expectations," "Scott of the Antarctic," "Hobson's Choice," "Ice Cold in Alex," "Tunes of Glory," "The Family Way" and "Ryan's Daughter,"

What did war look like in the cultural imagination of 1914? Why did men in Scotland sign up to fight in unprecedented numbers? What were the martial myths shaping Scottish identity from the aftermath of Bannockburn to the close of the nineteenth century, and what did the Scottish soldiers of the First World War think they were fighting for? Scotland and the First World War: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Bannockburn is a collection of new interdisciplinary essays interrogating the trans-historical myths of nation, belonging and martial identity that shaped Scotland's encounter with the First World War. In a series of thematically linked essays, experts from the fields of literature, history and cultural studies examine how Scotland remembers war, and how remembering war has shaped Scotland.

Feminism has transformed the academic study of literature, fundamentally altering the canon of what is taught and setting new agendas for literary analysis. In this authoritative history of feminist literary criticism, leading scholars chart the development of the practice from the Middle Ages to the present. The first section of the book explores protofeminist thought from the Middle Ages onwards, and analyses the work of pioneers such as Wollstonecraft and Woolf. The second section examines the rise of second-wave feminism and maps its interventions across the twentieth century. A final section examines the impact of postmodernism on feminist thought and practice. This book offers a comprehensive guide to the history and development of feminist literary criticism and a lively reassessment of the main issues and authors in the field. It is essential reading for all students and scholars of feminist writing and literary criticism.

This book is the outcome of a successful workshop held in Leeds in September 2003 and explores the effects of World War II on the representation of gender in post-war literature, film and popular culture, juxtaposing Western European experience with US, Soviet and Japanese. It aims to outline the different ways in which these representations evolved in post-war attempts both to re-establish social order and reconstruct national identity. It gives the reader an overview of the similarities and differences that have emerged in the representation of war and gender in different cultures and media, as a result of social expectations, political change and individual artistic innovation. The essays are linked by their concern with three key questions: how are emotion and gender represented in relation to the experience of war; what is the impact of war on the dynamic between the genders; and, as the memory of war recedes, is it possible to identify chronological shifts in the artistic response to the conflict?

What did war look like in the cultural imagination of 1914? Why did men in Scotland sign up to fight in unprecedented numbers? What were the martial myths shaping Scottish identity from the aftermath of Bannockburn to the close of the nineteenth century, and what did the Scottish soldiers of the First World War think they were fighting for? Scotland and the First World War: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Bannockburn is a collection of new interdisciplinary essays interrogating the trans-historical myths of nation, belonging and martial identity that shaped Scotland's encounter with the First World War. In a series of thematically linked essays, experts from the fields of literature, history and cultural studies examine how Scotland remembers war, and how remembering war has shaped Scotland.

This is a groundbreaking re reading of the literary response to a decade of trauma and transformation. This study focuses on the thematic preoccupations that emerged from writers' immersion in and resistance to the Second World War. Through 7 chapters - Documenting, Desiring, Killing, Escaping, Grieving, Adjusting and Atomizing - the book sets middlebrow and popular writers alongside residual modernists and new voices to reconstruct the literary landscape of the period, arguing that the postwar is a concept that emerges almost simultaneously with the war itself, and that 'peace' is significant only by its absence in an emergent post Atomic cold war era. It includes a detailed and theoretically informed case studies of canonical writers such as Bowen, Orwell, Greene and Waugh. It offers case studies and critical re evaluations of popular genre writers and forgotten writers.

A groundbreaking re-reading of the literary response to a decade of trauma and transformation This new study undoes the customary division of the 1940s into the Second World War and after. Instead, it focuses on the thematic preoccupations that emerged from writers' immersion in and resistance to the conflict. Through seven chapters - Documenting, Desiring, Killing, Escaping, Grieving, Adjusting and Atomizing - the book sets middlebrow and popular writers alongside residual modernists and new voices to reconstruct the literary landscape of the period. Detailed case studies of fiction, drama and poetry provide fresh critical perspectives on writers as diverse as Margery Allingham, Alexander Baron, Elizabeth Bowen, Keith Douglas, Graham Greene, Henry Green, Georgette Heyer, Alun Lewis, Nancy Mitford, George Orwell, Mervyn Peake, J. B. Priestley, Terrence Rattigan, Mary Renault, Stevie Smith, Dylan Thomas and Evelyn Waugh. Arguing that the postwar is a concept that emerges almost simultaneously with the war itself, and that 'peace' is significant only by its absence in an emergent post-Atomic cold war era, this book reclaims the complexity of a decade all too often lost in the fault-lines between pre-war modernism and the emergence of the postmodern. Key Features: *Detailed, theoretically informed case studies of canonical writers such as Bowen, Orwell, Greene and Waugh *Detailed case studies and critical re-evaluations of popular genre writers, and forgotten writers.