ABSTRACT
A string of British films enjoyed considerable critical and box-office success in the 1990s, from Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell, 1994) to Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996), from The Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo, 1997) to Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur, 1998), from Sliding Doors (Peter Howitt, 1997) to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Guy Ritchie, 1998), from Shakespeare in Love (John Madden, 1998) to Notting Hill (Roger Michell, 1999). There is a similar vitality and energy to be found in the academic study of British cinema. New books appear by the shelf-full: from Sarah Street's British National Cinema to Robert Murphy's The British Cinema Book, from Pam Cook's Fashioning the Nation to Charles Barr's English Hitchcock, from Jeffrey Richards’ The Forgotten Thirties to John Hill's British Cinema in the 1980s. 1 The Journal of Popular British Cinema has become an annual fixture. Universities, colleges and schools all over the United Kingdom, not to mention the United States, Australia and elsewhere, offer an increasingly diverse range of courses on British cinema. The conference that spawned this publication was a major event, attracting speakers from all over the world. British cinema, past and present, is now a well-established area of study.
