ABSTRACT
In the late twentieth century, scores of cinema and television productions represented the British past to a mass American audience. Six of these productions won the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture, including Lawrence of Arabia (1962), A Man for All Seasons (1966) and Gandhi (1982). Television serials such as The Forsyte Saga, Elizabeth R and Upstairs, Downstairs attracted substantial audiences in America, as did the films of Merchant/Ivory during the 1980s. If in schools and universities, courses in British history suffered from diminishing enrollments, visual depictions of the British past enjoyed wide appeal. Film and television probably informed more Americans about British history than any other medium of communication.
