SOME of the most enduring images of Modern Britain in the popular imagination of Americans have come from films. Some of these films are of average quality and imperfect in their historical accuracy, but many are excellent and effectively recreate the environment and compelling issues that people living in Britain, Ireland, and the British Empire faced at different moments in their history. And since films are the media through which much of the general public gain their impressions of British culture and history, they are worthy of consideration by historians for that reason alone.

In Britain, the growth of the nation's film industry has played an important role in the development of postwar society and culture. In recent years Britain has been at the leading edge of movie making and distribution worldwide. Many British and Irish films have received international recognition for their quality and innovation while Hollywood increasingly relies on British expertise in its own film production. The Government of Britain has even awarded substantial tax rebates to production companies that are able to make the case that their films are "culturally British." These rebates allow filmmakers to claim up to 16% of the cost of big-budget films and 20% of smaller ones. This government effort to advance British culture and national identity has encouraged American studios to take advantage of the discount by filming in Britain. Nowadays, many American movies are actually filmed at Pinewood Shepperton Studios outside of London. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) supports and awards superior achievement in the industry. See also 100 Years of British Film and the British Film Institute (BFI).

Below is a selection of films useful for complementing our study of Modern British history and culture. Most of them can be obtained at Watzek Library or through the Summit Library Consortium. You can also find many of them on Netflix.

Some information courtesy of Internet Movie Database. Used with permission

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE

Director: Tony Richardson, 1968

This film chronicles the events that led to British involvement in the Crimean War against Russia culminating in the siege of Sevastopol and the fierce Battle of Balaclava in October 1854. The climax is the heroic but doomed charge of British cavalrymen ordered to advance against well-defended Russian artillery. The Light Brigade's destruction owed primarily to the jealousy, infighting, and gross incompetence of its aristocratic commanders.

THE YOUNG VICTORIA

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée, 2009

This lavish costume drama focuses on the turbulent and lonely years of Queen Victoria's childhood, her accession to the throne when she was eighteen years old, and the uncertain beginning of her long reign. Her eventual success as a monarch was nurtured through two crucial relationships: her engagement and marriage to Albert, the prince-consort, and the political mentoring provided by her first prime minister, Lord Melbourne.

SHATRANJ KE KHILARI THE CHESS PLAYERS

Director: Satyajit Ray, 1977

In 1856, officials of the East India Company move to consolidate their hold over North India by annexing the wealthy kingdom of Awadh. The chief minister to the Nawab attempts to warn his ruler and local landlords of the impending danger but they ignore him and instead indulge their obsession with playing chess. The game becomes a metaphor for the larger game of politics played by the British as they maneuver to capture Awadh's king.

MRS. BROWN

Director: John Madden, 1997

This film examines at the relationship between Queen Victoria and John Brown, a Scottish commoner who, though a servant, became her closest friend and confidant. As such, he proved the catalyst to bring her back into public life and out of her private mourning for the late Prince Albert.

MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON

Director: Bob Rafelson, 1990

This film is based on the biographical novel by William Harrison and the travel diaries of Victorian explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke. The film traces the friendship between Burton and Speke that grew during their 1856 expedition to find the source of the Nile. Their route took them through East Africa from Zanzibar to the shores of Lake Victoria.

CREATION

Director: Jon Amiel, 2009

Charles Darwin, a brilliant scientist and devoted family man, struggles to come to terms with the devastating loss of his eldest daughter, Annie. Worried that his path-breaking theory of evolution might alienate his deeply religious wife and endanger their marriage, Darwin had procrastinated completing his manuscript. Yet the memory of his inquisitive, intelligent and logical daughter spurs him to complete Origin of Species and send it off for publication.

THE ELEPHANT MAN

Director: David Lynch, 1980

This gothic film gives a moving portrayal of John Merrick, the grotesquely deformed Victorian-era man better known as "The Elephant Man". Inarticulate and abused, Merrick ekes out a miserable living as a sideshow freak until a dedicated London doctor, Frederick Treves, rescues him from that life and offers him an existence with dignity. An interesting view of the Victorian medical community.

ZULU DAWN

Director: Douglas Hickox, 1979

This epic recounts the Battle of Isandhlwana fought on 22 January 1879 in Natal, South Africa. In the course of the fighting about 1,200 British soldiers were massacred by a force of over 20,000 Zulu warriors and the regimental colors were lost. Isandhlwana was the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War and stands as one of the most shocking defeats in British military history. Zulu Dawn was written by Cy Enfield as a prequel to his more successful film Zulu (below) released fifteen years earlier.

ZULU

Director: Cy Endfield, 1964

In 1879 the British Army suffered one of its worst defeats when Zulu forces massacred 1,500 of its troops at Isandhlwana in South Africa. A short time after the main battle a Zulu force numbering in excess of 4000 warriors advanced on a British supply post at "Rorke's Drift" guarded by 139 Welsh infantrymen. This film was made in the 1960s at a time when Britain's colonial control over Africa was rapidly disintegrating.

KHARTOUM

Director: Basil Deardon, 1966

This Hollywood epic recounts the ill-fated struggle in 1885 of General Charles Gordon and his British-Egyptian regiment to hold the Sudanese city of Khartoum in the face of an attack by the forces of the Mahdi, a charismatic religious leader bent on the expulsion of the British. An interesting portrayal of Gordon's Christian zeal and stubbornness set against the messianic goal of the Mahdi to wage a holy war against the foreign infidels.

KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS

Director: Robert Hamer, 1949

Set in Victorian England, this film remains the most popular of the postwar comedies produced at Ealing Green Studios. Louis D'Ascoyne is the would-be Duke of Chalfont whose mother was spurned by her noble family for marrying an Italian singer for love. Louis resolves to avenge his mother by murdering the relatives ahead of him in line for the dukedom, all of whom are played by Alec Guinness. Other Ealing comedies include The Lavender Hill Mob, The Ladykillers, and The Man in the White Suit.

CONDUCT UNBECOMING

Director: Michael Anderson, 1975

The plot revolves arounds a scandal in a British regiment stationed in India in the 1870s. Lt. Drake is from a middle-class background and is eager to advance himself by making the right impression. Lt. Millington, the son of a general, is not keen on army life and desires to get out as soon as he possibly can. When the widow of the regiment's most honored hero is assaulted, Drake must defend Millington from the charges in an unusual court-martial. Based on the 1969 play by Barry England.

FROM HELL

Directors: Albert and Allen Hughes, 2001

A stylish and dark thriller based on the infamous Whitechapel murders of 1888 that terrorized the residents of East London and baffled police. This is the most recent among many popular films about "Jack the Ripper" and provides an interesting and artful recreation of crime, poverty, and survival in the slums of Victorian Britain. The film's title "From Hell" refers to the return address on one of the notes left by the Ripper.

TOPSY-TURVY

Director: Mike Leigh, 2000

This film depicts the legendary musical duo Gilbert and Sullivan at a crossroads in their careers. Having scored numerous hits like The Pirates of Penzance and HMS Pinafore, they are mired in a creative dry spell. The plot revolves around the inspiration for their comic opera The Mikado. Gilbert & Sullivan operettas were extraordinarily popular among the very same Victorian society that they satirized. Considered by many to be quinessentially English, they remain beloved by audiences worldwide.

BREAKER MORANT

Director: Bruce Beresford, 1980

This movie tells the true story of three Australian army officers serving in the Bushveldt Carbiniers, a unit of the British Army fighting in the Boer War. The men were court-martialed by the British South African High Command for alleged atrocities. The Australians claim they were scapegoats in an unpopular war. An insightful glimpse into the growing tensions between Britain and her imperial dominions. Based on the 1979 play by Australian Kenneth Ross.

WILDE

Director: Brian Gilbert, 1997

This film portrays the life of poet, playwright, and novelist Oscar Wilde. The self-realization of his homosexuality caused Wilde enormous torment as he juggled marriage, fatherhood, and responsibility with his obsessive love for Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde refused to flee the country when charged with "gross indecency" and was sentenced to two years hard labor. An interesting glimpse into the genius of Wilde and the intolerance and hypocrisy of late Victorian Britain.

TITANIC: BLOOD AND STEEL

Director: Ciaran Donnelly, 2012

In 1909 the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast embarked on the most ambitious project in its history: to build the largest ship in the world. This television miniseries recreates the events of the three-year construction of the unsinkable liner Titanic from the perspective of the wealthy investors, middle-class engineers, and working-class shipyard crews. The plot alternates between the technical details of the fated liner and the rising political consciousness of Belfast's Protestants and Catholics.

THE LOST PRINCE

Director: Stephen Poliakoff, 2003

This film tells the heartbreaking true story of Prince John, youngest child of King George V and Queen Mary. His short and sad life spanned from the pomp of the Edwardian court through the turmoil of the First World War. A loving, insightful, and humorous child, John suffered from epilepsy and autistic-like learning difficulties and was diagnosed as an "imbecile". An embarrassment to his image-conscious family, he was isolated from public view in one of the royal estates until his premature death.

THE SHOOTING PARTY

Director: Alan Bridges, 1985

In the summer of 1913 a small group of lords and ladies gathers at the country estate of Sir Randolph Nettleby for a shooting party. A code of aristocratic propriety governs every aspect of the event—including speech, dress, dining, interaction with the estate's tenants, courtship, shooting, and even adultery. An interesting portrayal of a way of life that on the eve of the First World War was already in the midst of an irreversible decline.

DOWNTON ABBEY

Director: Brian Percival, et. al., 2010

This acclaimed series is set in a fictional Yorkshire estate and revolves around the lives of the Crawleys, an aristocratic family living through the great events of the early 20th century. The plot portrays changes in British society and class sensibilities beginning in the post-Edwardian years and lasting into the chaos and uncertainty of the Interwar period. Some critics have noted that popularity with American viewers has affected the depiction of class attitudes and other social behavior in later episodes.

THE GOOD SOLDIER

Director: Kevin Billington, 1981

In the decade before the First World War, two wealthy and attractive upper class couples—one English, one American—meet at a German spa and forge an immediate bond. Through nine seasons at the spa, the four come to share with each other their same tastes, desires, and elegantly perfect Edwardian lives. Over time, however, it becomes clear just how far short of perfection their lives really are. Based on the 1915 semi-autobiographical novel by Ford Madox Ford.

SHACKLETON

Director: Charles Sturridge, 2002

This miniseries tells the story of Britain's great "Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition" of 1914 led by Sir Ernest Shackleton. The plot focuses primarily on Shackleton's epic struggle to lead his 28 man crew to safety after their expedition ship Endurance was crushed in pack ice. By the beginning of the 20th century, polar exploration represented for Britain the last great frontier of imperial discovery.

CARRINGTON

Director: Christopher Hampton, 1995

This film centers on the lives of the Bloomsbury group of intellectuals and artists in post-Victorian England, as seen through the relationship between the painter Dora Carrington and writer Lytton Strachey. Carrington will not give herself to any of the men in her life (including her husband)—at least not emotionally. Instead, she has found her soulmate in Strachey, a homosexual who, in fact, is infatuated with Carrington's husband.

THE ENGLISHMAN WHO WENT UP A HILL BUT CAME DOWN A MOUNTAIN

Director: Christopher Monger, 1995

Two English surveyors visit the small South Wales village of Ffynnon Garw in 1917 to measure what is claimed to be the "first mountain inside of Wales". The villagers are proud of their "mountain" and are disappointed to learn that it is in fact a "hill". Not to be outdone by a mere rule (and the English who enforce it), the villagers set out to make their hill into a mountain. A comic look at Welsh pride and the attitudes of the "Celtic periphery" towards English predominance.

OH! WHAT A LOVELY WAR

Director: Richard Attenborough, 1969

An unlikely musical satire about the First World War as portrayed by the leaders of the great powers and the members of an average British family, the Smiths, who go off to fight. Much of the plot is conveyed in the lyrics of actual songs from the period and many scenes recreate some of the more famous (and infamous) incidents of the war. A mocking comedy about the jingoism, cynical politicking, and wartime enthusiasm that sent so many to die. Based on the 1963 stage musical of the same name.

REILLY, ACE OF SPIES

Directors: Martin Campbell and Jim Goddard, 1983

This television series dramatizes the extraordinary life and exploits of Sigmund Rosenblum, an Odessa-born Jew, (a.k.a. Sidney Reilly) who became Britain's first modern super-spy. With his remarkable gift for self-invention and reinvention, Reilly engaged in freelance espionage against the Germans and Russians in the early 20th century. His resourcefulness, self-confidence, and incorrigible womanizing were later the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s master spy, James Bond.

ALL THE KING'S MEN

Director: Julian Jarrold, 1999

At the outbreak of war in 1914 a company of the Norfolk Regiment was formed from staff members at the royal estate in Sandringham. A year later the regiment suffered heavy losses at Gallipoli and, during confusion of battle, the Sandringham Company advanced behind Turkish lines and disappeared in the smoke and mist. This film recreates the efforts by the Queen Mother, Alexandra, after the war to learn the fate of her soldier servants.

MICHAEL COLLINS

Director: Neil Jordan, 1996

A biographical account of the IRA fighter and Irish statesman from the 1916 Easter Rising to his assassination in 1922. A vivid recreation of the Irish republican movement, the guerrilla campaign against British forces, and the Irish Civil War. The film is historically accurate, but the characterization of Collins, Harry Boland, and Eamon De Valera remains controversial.

THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME

Cinematographers: John McDowell and Geoffrey Malins, 1916

When this silent battlefield documentary was released in 1916 it is estimated that more than 20 million tickets were sold in the first two months alone. The film was then distributed internationally to demonstrate Britain's commitment to victory in the Great War. It has become one of the most successful British films ever made and the source of many of the war's most iconic images (though a few scenes were staged). In 2005 it became the only British document ever inscribed in UNESCO's "Memory of the World" register.

MY BOY JACK

Director: Brian Kirk, 2007

At the start of the First World War, famed author Rudyard Kipling uses his influence to get his physically unqualified son, Jack, a commission in the Irish Guards. Jack's deployment to France may be the fulfillment of the elder Kipling's patriotic dream but it is a nightmare for Jack's mother and sister. When Jack is reported missing after the Guards suffer terrible losses, Mrs. Kipling forces her husband to use his influence once again, to discover the fate of their son. Based on the 1997 play by David Haig.

PARADE'S END

Director: Susanna White, 2012

This lavish television series of the First World War focuses on Christopher Tietjens, a young British aristocrat, and his experiences amid the horrors of the trenches and the social change occurring on the home front. Much of the plot revolves around a love triangle involving Tietjens' vindictive wife Sylvia and a young suffragette named Valentine. Based on the four novels by Ford Madox Ford published between 1924 and 1928.

THE LAST SEPTEMBER

Director: Deborah Warner, 1999

Set in Co. Cork in 1920, this film revolves around the lives and romantic complications of an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family living on their estate in the midst of the Irish war for independence. An interesting look at the last days of the Protestant Ascendancy and of their own sense of Irishness being tested through the changing national climate of their country and an uncertain future. Based on the 1929 novel by Elizabeth Bowen.

BENEATH HILL 60

Director: Jeremy Sims, 2010

This film tells the story of the 1st Australian Tunneling Company's effort to mine beneath a German bunker in the Ypres Salient at the start of the Battle of Messines in June 1917. Their extremely perilous mission was to detonate an enormous explosive charge to aid the advance of British troops. The screenplay is based on an account of the ordeal written by Capt. Oliver Woodward, the officer who led the mission.

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY

Director: Ken Loach, 2006

This award-winning film begins in 1919 when Irish volunteers wage a guerrilla campaign against the ruthless "Black and Tan" paramilitary squads arriving from Britain to block Ireland's bid for independence. Driven by a deep sense of duty and love of country, Damien abandons a promising career as a doctor and joins his brother, Teddy, in this dangerous and violent struggle. Their victory is followed in 1922 by the Irish Civil War that pits these same comrades against each other.

BIRDSONG

Director: Philip Martin, 2012

This romance, told in a series of flashbacks, focuses on the experiences of Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman who travels to Amiens in 1910 and has an affair with the wife of a French colleague but returns home shortly afterward. A few years later, Wraysford is deployed to the Western Front as an officer in a combat mining battalion. Amid his near-death experiences in battle he discovers the fate of his lost love. Based on the 1993 novel by Sebastian Faulks.

KING AND COUNTRY

Director: Joseph Losey, 1964

In the trenches at Passchendaele, an army private, Arthur Hamp leaves his company and is accused of desertion. He is defended at his trial by Capt. Hargreaves, an upper-class officer who is initially contemptuous of the simple-minded Hamp but comes to identify with his plight. Nevertheless Hamp must be made an example of. He is found guilty and is shot by a firing squad. The action is confined to the muddy, rat-infested trenches and barracks. Based on the 1955 novel by J.L. Hodson.

REGENERATION / BEHIND THE LINES

Director: Gillies MacKinnon, 1998

Set in 1917 in an army sanitarium in Scotland, this film focuses on the psychiatric treatment of shell-shocked soldiers from the Western Front. The patients being treated range from the catatonic, amnesiac, and deranged to sane war heroes like the poet Siegfried Sassoon who is being punished for his anti-war pamphlets. A moving film with dialogue interspersed with voiced-over selections from the "War Poets" best-known verses. Based on Pat Barker's 1991 novel and true events.

BLACK ADDER GOES FORTH

Director: Richard Boden, 1989

The fourth and final season of the BBC historical sitcom Black Adder is set in 1917 on the Western Front. This is a somewhat dark subject for a comedy and was a risky project for all involved. Yet the series succeeds in using humor to underscore the terrible conditions of the trenches, stunning incompetence of the leadership, and futile loss of life among the men. The final episode is particularly moving and gives a good sense of how the British view this war.

A PASSAGE TO INDIA

Director: David Lean, 1984

Tensions between Indians and the colonial British residents of the town of Chandrapore boil over when a visiting Englishwoman, Adela Quested, accuses a young Indian physician, Dr. Aziz, of rape during a tour of the local caverns. Based on E.M. Forster's 1924 novel, this film can be seen as a study of colonial relations, perceived differences between East and West, and the nature of memory and friendship.

TOM & VIV

Director: Brian Gilbert, 1994

The troubled marriage between the Anglo-American poet T.S. Eliot (Tom) and Vivienne Haigh-Wood (Viv) is the subject of this finely acted film. Plagued with numerous physical and mental debilitations, Viv is eventually committed to an asylum. The tragic relationship between Tom & Viv is set against the rise of Eliot's poetic career and the reactions of the literary elite in Edwardian and interwar Britain.

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED

Director: Michael Lindsay-Hogg, 1981

Based on Evelyn Waugh's classic novel, this miniseries provides a vivid glimpse into the world of aristocratic English Catholicism as well as the "lost generation" of interwar Britain. An elegy to youth and idyllic student days, the film portrays lavish consumption and a lack of purpose in life that reflect the decline of the British aristocracy in the 20th century.

CHARIOTS OF FIRE

Director: Hugh Hudson, 1981

This Academy Award winning film centers around an unlikely pair of young athletes representing Britain as sprinters in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric is a Scottish divinity student whose running makes him feel closer to God. Harold, a Jew, is a highly competitive Cambridge student struggling to overcome institutional hurdles of class prejudice and anti-Semitism.

BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS

Director: Stephen Fry, 2003

In the 1920s Britain's answer to America's "Jazz Age" centered on the social life of the sons and daughters of the country's upper classes. These wealthy, spoiled, and well-connected young people inhabited a world of extravagant parties, motor races, foreign holidays, and hedonistic consumption. Meanwhile their scandalous activities provided fodder for tabloid newspapers competing for readers. Based on the 1930 novel Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh.

LOVE ON THE DOLE

Director: John Baxter, 1941

This film, based on the 1933 novel by William Greenwood, is set in an industrial slum in Salford and follows the travails of the Hardcastle family as they endure the crises of mass unemployment and tumultuous labor agitation in the 1930s. Throughout that decade, British film censors refused to allow a film to be made based on this book because of its controversial subject matter. It was finally produced in 1941, but by then war had dramatically changed the social conditions in Britain.

GOSFORD PARK

Director: Robert Altman, 2001

Set in the 1930s, the plot of this period piece takes place in an English country estate where the family has invited many of their friends for a weekend shooting party. A murder occurs after a dinner party and the film goes on to present the subsequent investigation from the perspectives of both the servants and the guests.

LIAM

Director: Stephen Frears, 2000

When Liam's father loses his job during the Depression, the family struggles to hold things together and everyone deals with the hardship in his or her own way. Liam's dad joins the fascists, his brother attends secret meetings of the socialists, and his sister goes to work as a housekeeper for a wealthy Jewish family, while Liam searches for answers in Catholicism. An unsentimental and provocative portrayal of working-class life and the tumultuous politics of 1930s Britain.

A HANDFUL OF DUST

Director: Charles Sturridge, 1988

This adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's 1934 satirical novel tells the story of Tony and Brenda Last, an upper-class couple living on their country estate. Tired with their predictable and tedious social circuit, Brenda has an affair with a shallow and parasitic social climber who has befriended the couple. The film remains faithful to Waugh’s vision of upper-class tradition and gentility swept away by the avaricious demands of the rising middle classes.

WINSTON CHURCHILL: THE WILDERNESS YEARS

Director: Ferdinand Fairfax, 1981

This miniseries covers the decade of political exile in the career of Winston Churchill—a period he described as the most difficult of his life. When Churchill lost his cabinet post in 1929, most political observers thought his career was over. Yet the next decade would see the evolution of Churchill's maverick style of leadership as a defender of the British Empire, an opponent of appeasement, and eventually as a wartime prime minister. Starring Robert Hardy as Churchill.

THE STARS LOOK DOWN

Director: Carol Reed, 1939

Davey Fenwick leaves his Northumberland mining village on a university scholarship and is intent upon becoming an activist for the nationalization of Britain's mines. Instead he returns home before finishing his degree and takes up work as a local schoolteacher. He soon finds himself uncomfortable in this role and when he learns that his father and the other miners are being coerced to work on a potentially deadly coal seam he decides to act. Based on the 1935 novel by A.J. Cronin.

LAND AND FREEDOM

Director: Ken Loach, 1995

David, a young unemployed communist, leaves his hometown Liverpool in 1936 to join the struggle against fascism in Spain. He joins the POUM, an international militia of Marxists, and after being wounded goes to Barcelona. There he grows disillusioned as he witnesses infighting and power struggles among the various anti-fascist groups. The story is very similar to the real-life experience of Eric Blair (George Orwell) described in Homage to Catalonia.

EDWARD & MRS. SIMPSON

Director: Waris Hussein, 1981

While still Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII meets the married American socialite, Wallis Simpson. Their relationship causes an uproar in the palace and Parliament. When King George V dies in 1936, Mrs. Simpson gets divorced and King Edward announces his intentions to marry her. Produced in 1981, this miniseries coincided with the royal wedding of Charles and Diana and the revived public interest in the monarchy's past.

ATONEMENT

Director: Joe Wright, 2007

In 1935, as the shadow of war looms over Europe, 13-year-old Briony Tallis and her family are enjoying the summer on their English estate. When she observes a flirtation between a servant's son and her older sister—that she childishly misconstrues—Briony's misunderstanding leads to a terrible crime whose consequences follow them through World War II. A powerful story about personal history and memory in one of Britain's most anxious periods. Based on the best-selling novel by Ian McEwan.

THE REMAINS OF THE DAY

Director: James Ivory, 1993

This thought-provoking film centers on Mr. Stevens, a dedicated English butler, and his zeal to serve his aristocratic employer, Lord Darlington, during the late 1930s—the time of appeasement and growing tensions on European continent. In his single-minded devotion, Stevens sacrifices the most basic human intimacy in his dealings with the housekeeper, Miss Kenton, and also fails to see the naïve and destructive Nazi sympathies of Darlington until it is too late. Based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro.

THE KING'S SPEECH

Director: Tom Hooper, 2010

When Edward VIII abdicated the throne in 1936, his younger brother George ("Bertie") became king. As a younger son, Bertie had never been groomed to be monarch and, with his awkward manner and dreadful stutter, was considered by many to be unfit to be king. This film focuses on the king's friendship with his unorthodox speech therapist, Lionel Logue, and the improvement in his speech that enabled George VI to become an effective wartime ruler.

THE GATHERING STORM

Director: Richard Loncraine, 2002

An intimate look inside the marriage of Winston and Clementine Churchill during a particularly troubled, though little-known, period in their lives. In the late 1930s, Churchill found himself on the fringe of British politics: a lone voice warning his country and the world of the Nazi threat. Together with Clementine, he had to confront the personal demons of depression and the specter of insolvency before he could emerge as a reinvigorated wartime political leader. Starring Albert Finney as Churchill.

THE CAZALETS

Director: Suri Krishnamma, 2001

This miniseries is a stunning and powerful drama of a large, disparate, and privileged English family transformed by the tumultuous times in which they live. Based on the popular novels of Elizabeth Jane Howard, the story is set between 1937 and 1947, against a backdrop of war and a veneer of upper-class restraint and respectability.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP

Directors: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1943

This film chronicles the life and relationships of Major-General Clive Candy VC, an upper-class British Army officer, from his youth during the Boer War until his being called out of retirement to lead the Home Guard during the Second World War. The film was so controversial that Churchill and the War Office both tried unsuccessfully to prevent its release, claiming that the satirizing of martial honor and the sympathetic portrayal of Germans would undermine British wartime propaganda.

PIECE OF CAKE

Director: Ian Toynton, 1988

This miniseries tells the story of "Hornet Squadron," RAF fighter pilots dispatched to France at the outbreak of war in 1939. An interesting presentation of the war since less of the story takes place during the famed Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 and more in the "Phony War" that preceded it. Excellent aerial photography and a compelling storyline with good character development. Based on the novel by Derek Robinson.

MRS. MINIVER

Director: William Wyler, 1942

Mrs. Miniver is a typical English upper-middle class wife. Her daily life is devoted to her family and lighthearted activities but as war arrives they take a darker turn. Soon Mrs. Miniver's routine includes fitting her children for gasmasks and waiting out air raids in the family’s Anderson shelter. This film won six Academy Awards including Best Picture and many credit the popular book on which it was based with helping turn American public opinion away from neutrality in favor of Britain.

HOPE AND GLORY

Director: John Boorman, 1987

A comic and poignant story of the Battle of Britain and Blitz of London as seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy who is stuck at home with his mother, aunts, and bratty sisters while Britain's fight for national survival is raging on all around him.

INTO THE STORM: CHURCHILL AT WAR

Director: Thaddeus O'Sullivan, 2009

Continuing the storyline begun in The Gathering Storm, this film is set against the backdrop of the Second World War, and offers a compelling portrait of Britain's wartime prime minister. Churchill's dogged determination and charisma as a leader rallied the nation but ultimately undermined his political career and threatened his relationship with his most loyal supporter, his wife Clementine. Starring Brendan Gleeson as Churchill.

A PERFECT HERO

Director: James Cellan Jones, 1991

This television series centers on the experience of RAF fighter pilot Hugh Fleming who is left horribly disfigured from burns suffered when his plane is shot down during the Battle of Britain. As plastic surgeons labor to minimize the damage of his painful and gruesome injuries, Fleming transforms from an arrogant and callow youth into a man of character and wisdom, but less than the perfect hero that he and his wounded comrades are made out to be.

IN WHICH WE SERVE

Directors: Noel Coward and David Lean, 1942

Released in 1942, this film is more than mere propaganda about naval heroism; it is a window into the values and vulnerability of wartime Britain. Life aboard the destroyer HMS Torrin and among the families back home reveal a society ordered by class and tradition in which hardship is borne stoically and with quiet forbearance while sacrifice and devotion to duty remain the highest virtues. Written and directed by Noel Coward, the film is supposedly based on Lord Mountbatten's naval exploits.

BATTLE OF BRITAIN

Director: Guy Hamilton, 1969

This World War II epic recounts the heroic efforts of the Spitfire and Hurricane pilots of RAF Fighter Command who defended the skies over Britain in the summer of 1940. Their actions ultimately prevented a German invasion of the country. This film, with its all-star cast and spectacular aerial battle scenes, remains a popular tribute to "the few" who saved Britain.

THE CRUEL SEA

Director: Charles Frend, 1953

At the start of the war, Cdr. George Ericson is given command of the corvette HMS Compass Rose and ordered to undertake convoy escort duty with officers and men just out of training and who have no experience at sea. The film captures well the constant danger, privation, boredom, and grim humor of sailors during the Battle of the Atlantic, one of the most critical theatres of war in Britain's struggle for survival. Based on the 1951 novel by Nicholas Monsarrat.

TMAVOMODRÝ SVET DARK BLUE WORLD

Director: Jan Sverák, 2001

This film tells the compelling story of a group of Czech air force pilots who fled their homeland after German occupation in 1939 and formed their own Spitfire squadron in the RAF to fight their enemy in the skies over Britain. An excellent glimpse into the rarely told story of the hundreds of foreign airmen who participated in the Battle of Britain and of their interactions with English civilians. At the time it was produced, Dark Blue World was the most expensive Czech film ever made.

DANGER UXB

Director: John Hawkesworth, 1979

Lt. Brian Ash, a young officer in the Royal Engineers during the early days of the war, is assigned to a UXB ("unexploded bomb") unit. At the height of the Blitz, Ash and his men work courageously to deactivate German aerial bombs that have failed to detonate but which occasionally have time-delay fuses specifically designed to kill UXB men. The plot of this miniseries focuses on Ash's maturation as an officer and reveals the strain in wartime Britain that was endured by civilians and the military alike.

EMPIRE OF THE SUN

Director: Steven Spielberg, 1987

Jamie Graham is an upper class English schoolboy separated from his family after the Japanese Army invades the British sector of the international settlement in Shanghai in December 1941. Reduced to living on the street and fighting for food, he is eventually interned in a Japanese POW camp for British civilians. Amidst the sickness and food shortages in the camp, Jamie attempts to reconstruct his former life. Based on the 1984 autobiographical novel by J.G. Ballard.

MALTA STORY

Director: Brian Desmond Hurst, 1953

This film focuses on the heroic defense of Malta, Britain's vital fortress colony in the Mediterranean, during the Second World War. While the plot centers on the exploits of a British reconnaissance pilot stationed on the island and his romance with a young Maltese woman, much attention is given to the courage of the Maltese people themselves in successfully withstanding one of the longest and most destructive bombardment campaigns of the war.

ISLAND AT WAR

Director: Stephen Mallatratt, 2004

This miniseries offers a riveting view of the German invasion and occupation of the Channel Islands, the only part of the British Isles that fell under German control during the Second World War, and how life changed overnight for the small community of British inhabitants. The experience of the Channel Islanders gives a glimpse of what might have happened to Britain if the Germans had succeeded in a larger cross-channel invasion.

THE DAM BUSTERS

Director: Michael Anderson, 1954

Considered a classic of British cinema, this film tells the true story of the daring plan to bomb the dams of the Ruhr Valley at the heart of German industry. The story begins with Dr. Barnes Wallis and the innovative but difficult development of his "bouncing bomb". After intensive pilot training and practice runs, these bombs were delivered by a squadron of specially modified Lancaster bombers led by RAF Wing Commander Guy Gibson in one of the most dangerous missions of the war.

KING RAT

Director: Bryan Forbes, 1965

In the Changi POW camp in Singapore life is a living hell for the Allied prisoners. While the men barely survive in a sub-human existence, an enterprising and cynical American corporal, "King Rat", controls the camp's black market and makes deals with the Japanese guards. The story follows his interaction with two British officers: Lt. Marlowe, a genteel upper-class soldier, and Lt. Grey, the camp provost and a humorless and moralizing prig. Based on the 1962 debut novel by former POW James Clavell.

BORSTAL BOY

Director: Peter Sheridan, 2000

In 1942, Brendan Behan, the acclaimed Irish dramatist, is sixteen years old and headed to Liverpool on an IRA bombing mission. The mission is thwarted and he is convicted and imprisoned in Borstal, a reformatory for young offenders in East Anglia. There Brendan is forced to live and work side-by-side with those he perceives as the enemy—a confrontation that reveals a deep inner conflict in the young man and forces a difficult self-examination. Based on Behan's 1958 autobiographical novel.

THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI

Director: David Lean, 1957

During the Second World War British POWs are given the task, by their Japanese captors, of building a railway bridge in the harsh Southeast Asian jungle. Led by Colonel Nicholson, a stereotypical British officer, the prisoners score a moral victory over the Japanese by not only building the bridge, but running the whole show. Based on the novel by Pierre Boulle.

BRIEF ENCOUNTER

Director: David Lean, 1945

This is the story of a chaste but deeply passionate affair that develops between two middle-aged married people who meet by chance in a railway station café. After much agonizing they reach the painful realization that their love is an impossibility given their social and family responsibilities. The film offers a good view of the austerity and morality of wartime Britain and is considered to be one of the finest romances produced by the British film industry. Based on the play by Noel Coward.

THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN

Director: Christopher Morahan, 1984

This is a sixteen-part mini-series originally produced for Granada Television in Britain. It tells the story of a small group of Britons and Indians from the middle of the Second World War to the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. An excellent glimpse into the pysche of Anglo-Indians in the final days of the "Raj." Based on Paul Scott's Raj Quartet novels.

MOUNTBATTEN, THE LAST VICEROY

Director: Tom Clegg, 1986

This mini-series originally aired on British television. It traces the events and experiences of the last viceroy of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, and his wife Lady Edwina. Mountbatten came to India to oversee the transfer of power to independent India and Pakistan. The film captures very well the challenges, dilemmas, and tragedies involved in the British withdrawal and the partition of the Indian subcontinent.

SMALL ISLAND

Director: John Alexander, 2009

Born into a broken home and an impoverished life in colonial Jamaica, Hortense longs for a fulfilling life in England. During World War II the opportunity arises and a newly-married Hortense and her husband are soon on their way to the promised land of postwar Britain. The immigrant couple's dreams are soon tested by the harsh realities of racism and poverty in the heart of a declining empire. Based on the bestselling novel by Andrea Levy.

CAMBRIDGE SPIES

Director: Peter Moffat, 2003

In 1934, four brilliant, upper-class students at Trinity College, Cambridge were recruited to spy for the Soviet Union. Fueled by youthful idealism, a passion for social justice, a talent for lying, and a hatred for fascism, the four took huge personal risks in their later careers to pass on Britain's most sensitive secrets to Moscow. This series offers a compelling and intimate look at one of Britain's most notorious spy cases as well as the elitism and social privilege that placed the men themselves above suspicion.

THE HOUR

Directors: Harry Bradbeer, Coky Giedroyc, Jamie Payne, 2011

This British television series offers a behind-the-scenes drama and espionage thriller about a TV news and current affairs program launched by the BBC in 1956 shortly before the Suez crisis. The series has received mixed reviews, but most critics have been impressed by the attention to historical detail. An interesting look at the style and attitudes of metropolitan Britain during the Cold War and the end of the British Empire.

ROOM AT THE TOP

Director: Jack Clayton, 1959

John Lampton is an ambitious man of working-class origin employed in a dreary company town in postwar North England. Intelligent and hardworking, he is deeply resentful of class prejudice and eager to climb to the top in his company and in society. Along the way he has a relationship with an older French woman who helps him polish his image, but then abandons her to marry the boss's daughter. A bitter critique of the soulless pursuit of wealth and prestige. Based on the novel by John Braine.

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

Director: Michael Radford, 1984

In 1984 (the not-so-distant future) rocket bombs and rats prey upon the metropolis of London, now the capital of the totalitarian state of Oceania. Under the ceaseless gaze of "Big Brother," an anonymous drone in the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith, commits the crime of falling in love. Based on the 1948 masterpiece of literature and social commentary by George Orwell, this film—released in the year of book's title—is considered by many to be the best screen adaptation.

BILLY LIAR

Director: John Schlesinger, 1963

Billy Fisher is a lazy and irresponsible young clerk in a provincial North England town who lives in a fantasy world and makes emotionally immature decisions that alienate his friends and family. The social atmosphere of Britain in this period is well rendered with the older wartime generation—represented by Billy's working-class parents—very much at odds with what they see as a spoiled and decadent youth culture. Based on the 1960 play by Willis Hall.

SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING

Director: Karel Reisz, 1961

Throughout the 1950s, a group of young writers referred to as "Angry Young Men" excoriated in their novels and plays what they perceived to be the dominant and superficial materialism of postwar British society. This film is based on one such novel by Alan Sillitoe that focuses on a disillusioned factory worker in an English Midlands town who works all week so that he can afford to drink and chase women on Saturday evenings.

SHADOWLANDS

Director: Richard Attenborough, 1993

This film is based on the real-life romance during the 1950s between the British writer C.S. Lewis and divorced American poet Joy Gresham. Lewis is living comfortably as a respected Oxford don, his scholarly lifestyle serving as a shell protecting him from the emotional risk of love, when Gresham arrives at the university. The safety of his academic routine is quickly disrupted when Lewis realizes that he has fallen deeply and unexpectedly in love.

THE KRAYS

Director: Peter Medak, 1990

A disturbing character study of the twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray, two of the most notorious gangsters in British history. The plot follows the boys from their working-class childhood in war-ravaged London through their rise as young men in the city's organized crime underworld during the heyday of the "swinging sixties." The film focuses on the psychology of the men from extreme violence to their warm relationship with their doting mother. The Krays are still the subject of much urban folklore in London.

VERA DRAKE

Director: Mike Leigh, 2004

Vera Drake is completely devoted to, and loved by, her working class family. She spends her days doting on them and caring for her sick neighbor and elderly mother. She also secretly visits women and helps them induce miscarriages for unwanted pregnancies. The practice was illegal in 1950s England and when the authorities finally find out what she has been doing, Vera's world and family life rapidly unravel.

GUNS AT BATASI

Director: John Guillermin, 1964

Regimental Sergeant-Major Lauderdale is an old-school martinet assigned with other British NCOs and officers to a remote African outpost to train soldiers of a newly independent former colony (a thinly veiled Kenya). When a populist uprising overthrows the government, soldiers loyal to the new regime take over the barracks prompting a tense standoff with Lauderdale and his men. Released in 1964, at the height of decolonization, this film is a useful artifact of British feelings about the end of their empire.

AN EDUCATION

Director: Lone Scherfig, 2009

In the early 1960s, Jenny Mellor is a gifted but socially awkward sixteen-year old living with her parents in the London suburb of Twickenham. To fulfill her father's wishes, everything she does is in the sole pursuit of being accepted into Oxford. When she becomes involved with a dashing playboy nearly twice her age, she must decide whether to embrace his glamorous but suspect lifestyle or continue with her education. Based loosely on the memoir by journalist Lynn Barber.

SCANDAL

Director: Michael Caton-Jones, 1989

The film is based on the true story of the 1963 Profumo affair. John Profumo was cabinet secretary for war in the early sixties when he met teenager Christine Keeler through a London osteopath, Dr Stephen Ward. Profumo and Keeler had an affair, and the ensuing scandal caused Profumo (after many strenous denials) eventually to resign. The Profumo affair was a notorious event in its time and remains a blight on the history of British politics.

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT

Director: Richard Lester, 1964

The premise of this film is an exaggerated "day in the life" of the Liverpool music group, The Beatles. The fab four travel from train to hotel to television studio with their road crew while fleeing mobs of adoring fans and performing their hit songs. Nobody expected this first movie by the group to be much more than the quick exploitation of a passing musical fad, but when the film opened it immediately seduced the world and garnered two Academy Award nominations.

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD

Director: Martin Ritt, 1965

Alec Leamas is a burned out, aging British spy recalled to service and sent to East Germany supposedly to defect, but in fact to sow disinformation. Leamas soon becomes convinced that his own agency sees him as expendable and is setting him up for a fall. His struggle back from dehumanization is the final focus of the story. This film was based on the popular Cold War thriller by novelist John Le Carré and offers a gritty and unsentimental glimpse into British espionage—a stark contrast to James Bond fantasy.

THE WAR GAME

Director: Peter Watkins, 1965

Originally produced as a docudrama for BBC television at the height of the Cold War, The War Game remains one of the most controversial films in British history. It graphically depicts the aftermath of a thermonuclear attack on Kent, England and the effect on public order and the private lives of individuals. For twenty years the film was banned by the government as "too horrifying" for British audiences despite winning the Academy Award for best documentary in the year of its release.

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Director: Stanley Kubrick, 1971

This shocking film depicts a futuristic Britain in which a gang of teenagers goes on the rampage every night, beating, robbing, and raping helpless victims. After one of the boys is arrested he submits to "aversion therapy" to shorten his jail sentence, but when he is released, he finds that his new revulsion to violence leaves him ill-suited to function in a deeply violent and dysfunctional society. A dark and satirical social commentary based on Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel.

THE RULING CLASS

Director: Peter Medak, 1972

An eccentric member of the House of Lords dies in a bizarre accident leaving his estate to his son. Unfortunately, the son is insane and thinks he is (alternately) Jesus Christ and Jack the Ripper. Nevertheless, he is compelled by his late father's will to take up his role among the "ruling class" and assume the family seat in the House of Lords. This dark comedy offers a scathing and profoundly witty attack on Britain's class system and its political and social institutions.

84 CHARING CROSS ROAD

Director: David Hugh Jones, 1987

This film revolves arounds the lifelong correspondence between Helene, a struggling New York writer and Frank, a London bookseller. The relationship begins when Helene makes a mail order purchase of a few rare books from Frank. The two remain in contact and over the years eventually develop a special friendship and mutual unspoken love without ever having seen each other.

LONGFORD

Director: Tom Hooper, 2006

Originally produced for ITV, this film is inspired by real events in the life of Francis Pakenham, the 7th Earl of Longford. In 1965, despite a public outcry, Lord Longford befriended one of England's most notorious criminals, a young woman named Myra Hindley serving a life sentence for murdering several children with her then lover. Longford, a devout Catholic, often visited prisoners because of his passionate belief in forgiveness and in British society's need for prisoner rehabilitation.

QUADROPHENIA

Director: Franc Roddam, 1979

Jimmy, a young mailroom clerk living with his working-class parents in 1960s London, hates his job and his dull life. His only pleasure is the "Mod" lifestyle of music, drugs, fashion and motor-scooters that he shares with his friends. Based on the 1973 rock opera by The Who, this film depicts the rivalry between two subcultures of British youth—"Mods" and "Rockers"—that occasionally spilled over into violence in the seaside towns along the English Channel.

THE BANK JOB

Director: Roger Donaldson, 2008

Based on a 1971 bank heist in London, from which millions of pounds worth of cash and valuables were never recovered. Details were suppressed by a "D-Notice" government gag order, allegedly to protect a prominent member of the royal family. According to the producers, the film reveals the truth for the first time, although it includes significant elements of fiction and the extent to which it represents historical fact is difficult to determine. The actual files are sealed in the National Archives until 2054.

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY

Directors: Frances Alcock and John Irvin, 1979

George Smiley, a retired British spy, is taken to the home of an advisor to the prime minister on intelligence matters where he is given evidence that one of the men in the senior ranks of his old agency is a Russian spy. Smiley is asked to find him, without access to any of the agency’s files or letting on that anyone is under suspicion. This mini-series was based on a novel by John Le Carré and starred Alec Guiness as Smiley. The excellent feature film (2011) stars Gary Oldman.

EAST IS EAST

Director: Damien O'Donell, 1999

This film is set in Salford, Britain in 1971. Fish-and-chip shop owner George Khan expects his family to follow his strict Pakistani Muslim ways. But his children, with an English mother and having been born and brought up in Britain, increasingly see themselves as British and start to reject their father's rules on dress, food, religion, and living in general.

BLOODY SUNDAY

Director: Paul Greengrass, 2002

This film tells the story of Bloody Sunday—January 30, 1972—as it unfolded over one day, chronicling the arrival of thousands of British troops in the tense and crowded streets of Derry in Northern Ireland and the simultaneous preparations by civil rights leaders for a nonviolent but forceful march that was to make the case for Irish self-determination. The day tragically ended with British troops killing thirteen unarmed civilians.

RATCATCHER

Director: Lynne Ramsey, 1998

Set in a Glasgow slum during a 1973 trash collectors' strike, this film follows young James, who is distraught after accidentally causing the death of his friend and who dreams of moving into newly-built council flats. The plot moves between James' family and his friendships with other children. Even as the trash bags pile up, James takes comfort in something as simple as being combed for head lice.

A QUIET DAY IN BELFAST

Director: Milad Bessada, 1974

This intense and realistic drama is centered on a pair of Catholic identical twins, one from Belfast and the other living in Canada who comes to visit her sister. The plot culminates in a bombing by the Provisional IRA, the tarring and feathering of one of the women—because of her love for a British soldier—and the ultimate revenge of the troops. Based on the play by Andrew Dalrymple.

THE DAMNED UNITED

Director: Tom Hooper, 2009

This sports drama portrays Brian Clough’s 44-day tenure as the manager of Leeds United, England’s top football club in the mid-1970s. Shortly after taking over, Clough immediately alienates his players by his disgust at their dirty style of play and his assertion that their earlier victories were the result of cheating. An entertaining look inside Britain’s most important sport and the culture built around it. Based on the 2006 novel by David Peace.

FIVE MINUTES OF HEAVEN

Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2009

In 1975, in Northern Ireland, seventeen-year-old UVF member Alistair Little kills a Catholic boy, Jimmy Griffin, in his house in front of his younger brother Joe. Alistair is arrested and imprisoned for twelve years while Joe is blamed by his mother for not saving his brother. Thirty-three years later, a TV program arranges the meeting of Alistair and Joe expecting the truth to come out and then for reconciliation between the two.

SID AND NANCY

Director: Alex Cox, 1986

This film tells the morbid biographical story of Sid Vicious, bass player with the British punk group The Sex Pistols, and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. When the The Sex Pistols break up after their fateful US tour, Vicious attempts a solo career while in the grip of a heroin addiction. A graphic and at times disturbing view of the "punk" subculture that emerged from the youth of depressed industrial Britain in the late 1970s.

THE IRON LADY

Director: Phillyda Lloyd, 2011

In 1979, Conservative MP Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s first woman prime minister, overcoming barriers of class and gender along the way. This biopic traces the events of Thatcher’s controversial premiership through a series of flashbacks beginning with her first campaign for a seat in Parliament to her resignation as PM in 1990. Meryl Streep won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Thatcher.

SOME MOTHER'S SON

Director: Terry George, 1996

Based on the true story of the 1981 hunger strike in the Maze, a British prison in Northern Ireland, in which republican prisoner Bobby Sands led a protest against the treatment of him and other inmates as criminals rather than as prisoners of war. The film focuses on the mothers of two of the strikers, and their struggle to save the lives of their sons.

HUNGER

Director: Steve McQueen, 2008

This film dramatizes the six weeks prior to the death of Bobby Sands during the 1981 hunger strikes in Northern Ireland. Sands was the first of several Irish republicans in the Maze Prison to use the hunger strike to gain status as political prisoners. His example increased worldwide attention to Northern Ireland's troubles, galvanized the republican and loyalist communities, and ignited debate about the morality of this extreme form of protest.

AN UNGENTLEMANLY ACT

Director: Stuart Urban, 1992

This film portrays the days and hours before and during Argentina's 1982 invasion of the Falkland Islands, a British dependency in the South Atlantic. As Argentine forces land on the eastern island and make their way towards the town of Stanley, a detachment of Royal Marines prepares to defend the governor, his family, and their fellow islanders from the invaders. Based on actual accounts (though with some inaccuracies) the film aired on British TV during the tenth anniversary of the Falklands War.

ILUMINADOS POR EL FUEGO BLESSED BY FIRE

Director: Tristán Bauer, 2005

This Argentine film tells the story of the Falklands War through a series of flashbacks among veterans living with the scars of their country's "unwinnable" war. The plot takes the men back to their foxholes on the windswept and desolate Malvinas (Falklands) during the harrowing battles they fought with British forces sent to retake the islands. The Falklands War brought down Argentina's military junta while in Britain it contributed to a surge in popularity for Margaret Thatcher's government.

THIS IS ENGLAND

Director: Shane Meadows, 2006

Shaun is a 12-year-old loner living with his mother in an economically depressed English coastal town in 1983 after his father was killed in the Falklands War. He runs into a group of skinheads who, against expectations, turn out to be friendly and take him under their wing and fulfill his need for belonging. A complex coming-of-age story about race, masculinity and national identity based largely on the director's own experiences as a youth.

FOUR DAYS IN JULY

Director: Mike Leigh, 1985

Two Belfast couples are each expecting their first child around the same day as the July 12th Orange marches. Collette and Eugene are Catholic—he was crippled from abuse by British soldiers. Lorraine and Billy are Protestant—he is a soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment. Both women have their babies on the same day and share a hospital room while earlier their husbands sit together in the waiting area. A quietly moving film about normal human interaction among people in a divided society.

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER

Director: Jim Sheridan, 1993

One of the most controversial court cases in modern British history is the subject of this award-winning film. Gerry Conlon, a Belfast youth living in England, and three friends are convicted of the 1974 IRA pub bombing in Guildford. Even Conlon's father is jailed. An appeal to the British judiciary reveals forced confessions and wrongful prosecution. The appeal ultimately wins the release of the "Guildford Four" after years in prison and calls into question the integrity of Britain's criminal justice system.

MADE IN BRITAIN

Director: Alan Clarke, 1982

This raw and disturbing film centers on an unconventional teenaged skinhead named Trevor who cycles through a system of jails, courtrooms, counseling, and job centres. Despite the best effort of police and social workers, he remains determined to hold onto his hatred and defiance rather than toe the line in a society that values obedience and conformity. Intelligent and articulate, yet excessively profane, racist, and violent, Trevor challenges the stereotypes often attached to such figures in British society.

RIFF RAFF

Director: Ken Loach, 1990

The plot of this film centers on the relationship between Stevie, an ex-con construction worker, and his new girlfriend, Susan, an unemployed pub singer. Yet what is most entertaining and thought-provoking are the conversations among the multi-racial construction crew as they convert old buildings into condos for London's nouveau riche. This film is both a comedy and a harsh critique of the shabby working and living conditions of the urban poor in Thatcher's Britain.

MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE

Director: Stephen Frears, 1985

This film is set within the South Asian community in London during the 1980s. The main character, Omar, gains the running of his Uncle Nasser's laundromat. He is helped by his friend Johnny, who is white and an outsider, but not entirely accepted by either the white or Asian Londoners. An interesting perspective on multi-cultural London and the "Empire" coming home to Britain.

FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY

Director: Michael Stellman, 1988

Reuben, a black man, returns to his London council estate after being discharged from the elite paratroopers regiment as a decorated veteran of Northern Ireland and the Falklands War. However, he finds it difficult to get a job and integrate back into society. Once Reuben realizes that his illustrious military record holds no sway in civilian life he slowly but surely falls back into a life of petty crime with devastating consequences. One of Denzel Washington's earliest movie roles.

MY SON THE FANATIC

Director: Udayan Prasad, 1997

Parvez is a westernized Pakstani taxi driver living in the English Midlands town of Bradford. He watches helplessly as his British-born son, Farid, embraces Islamic fundamentalism in response to the bigotry and perceived moral degeneracy of working class life in England. The film has its comic moments but is mostly a drama dealing with cross-cultural and generational gaps among the South Asian community in Britain.

THE HISTORY BOYS

Director: Nicholas Hytner, 2006

Set in Sheffield in 1983, this film focuses on the lives of a gifted but unruly group of grammar school boys preparing for the entrance examinations of Britain's elite universities, Oxford and Cambridge. The plot revolves around the relationships between teachers and students and the typical pressures of adolescence, but also offers a revealing glimpse into the British educational system. Based on the Tony award-winning play by Alan Bennett.

RAINING STONES

Director: Ken Loach, 1993

This is the story of a working-class Manchester man devoted to his family and his Catholic religion. Although he has no money and is living on the dole, he is determined to buy his daughter a new dress for her first communion and tries to raise the money through various odd jobs until in desperation he is forced to borrow it from a local loan shark. The film was shot on location in the depressed "overspill" council estate of Langley in Middleton.

HIDDEN AGENDA

Director: Ken Loach, 1990

After an American human rights lawyer is assassinated in Belfast his girlfriend comes to Northern Ireland to learn the truth about his death. She is joined by a respected and fair-minded police detective from England assigned to the case. Their inquiry leads to backroom meetings with IRA gunmen and officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and exposes political manipulation and betrayal of trust at the highest levels of government.

A FISH CALLED WANDA

Director: Charles Crichton, 1988

The plot of this comedy revolves around the aftermath of a botched diamond heist in London planned by a team of British and American criminals. Throughout the story the characters exaggerate British and American stereotypes of each other and offer a hilarious view of the Anglo-American relationship. This film was written and directed by the legendary British comedy writer Charles Crichton and the cast features members of the Monty Python troupe and American co-stars.

BILLY ELLIOT

Director: Stephen Daldry, 2000

Set in 1984 against the backdrop of a bitter miners' strike in Yorkshire, Billy Elliot is an eleven-year-old boy who stumbles out of the boxing ring and onto the ballet floor. There he is forced to confront the disapproval of his working class mining family and build up his own self-confidence as he auditions for the Royal Ballet School.

HOUSE OF CARDS

Director: Paul Seed, 1990

Based on a novel by Michael Dobbs, this BBC miniseries tells the darkly satirical story of a ruthless and unscrupulous Conservative MP, Francis Urquhart, determined to advance himself politically, socially, and financially at all costs. House of Cards first aired on British television in the same year that Margaret Thatcher resigned after eleven years as Prime Minister. The series is part of a trilogy whose later installments include To Play the King (1993) and The Final Cut (1995).

FIFTY DEAD MEN WALKING

Director: Kari Skogland, 2008

From 1987 to 1991 Martin McGartland, a young Belfast Catholic, lived the harrowing double life of a secret agent. To the IRA, he was a trusted intelligence gatherer and an integral member of an active cell, but to the British government he was one of their most valuable informants. McGartland is credited by British intelligence with saving the lives of at least fifty people marked for assassination by the IRA. Based on McGartland's 1997 book.

BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM

Director: Gurinder Chadha, 2002

This comedy centers on Jess, a girl from a conservative Sikh family living in Hounslow, West London. Her only desire is to become a famous football star like her idol, David Beckham, but her traditional family refuses even to consider it. A light-hearted look at the tensions of family politics and growing up in the midst of two cultures.

THE BOXER

Director: Jim Sheridan, 1998

When former IRA member Danny Flynn returns to Belfast after fourteen years in prison, he wants only to find peace, resume his boxing career, and search out his long lost love. This film portrays with stark honesty the lives of ordinary people caught up in the sectarian violence of Northern Ireland - one of Britain's longest and most troublsome political problems.

THE DEAL

Director: Stephen Frears, 2003

This British television drama depicts the longstanding political rumor that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown made a pact that Blair would step down as Prime Minister so that Brown could take his place. The film begins in 1983, as the two men are first elected to Parliament, and concludes in 1994 at the time of the supposed agreement—with a brief epilogue following the 1997 general election. Based on James Naughtie's 2001 book The Rivals.

TO PLAY THE KING

Director: Paul Seed, 1993

In this second installment of the House of Cards trilogy, Prime Minister Urquhart faces off against the newly crowned king over the government's policies. The king's desire to be relevant to his people as a social reformer leads him to throw his high-profile support behind the opposition leader, violating the tradition of royal non-interference in parliamentary politics. An interesting portrayal of the still tenuous relationship in Britain between the monarchy and government. Based on the novel by Michael Dobbs.

TRAINSPOTTING

Director: Danny Boyle, 1996

This film is based on Irvine Welsh's controversial first novel. It revolves around a group of heroin-addicted friends among the working class youth of Edinburgh and paints a bleak picture of the violent and hopeless existence within Britain's junkie subculture. Filled with black humor and local slang, the film provides an interesting look into the darker side of modern British society.

THE QUEEN

Director: Stephen Frears, 2006

An intimate and, at times, darkly comic view of the interaction between Queen Elizabeth II and the new prime minister Tony Blair following the untimely death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in August 1997. As days passed, the Queen and Prime Minister struggled to reach a compromise between what was a private tragedy for the Royal family and the public demand for an overt display of mourning from the nation's leaders.

WONDERLAND

Director: Michael Winterbottom, 1999

This realistic and well-acted film traces the ordinary working-class lives of a middle-aged London couple and their four adult children over a period of three days during Guy Fawkes weekend. A harsh and unsentimental view of the loneliness, anonymity, vulnerability and, ultimately, the humanity of life in modern urban Britain.

DIRTY PRETTY THINGS

Director: Stephen Frears, 2002

Okwe, a kind-hearted Nigerian doctor, and Senay, a Turkish chambermaid, work at the same West London hotel. The hotel is the sort of place where drug dealing and prostitution regularly takes place, but when Okwe finds a human heart in one of the rooms, he uncovers something far more sinister than just a common crime. An interesting glimpse into the shadow world of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers in present-day Britain.

OMAGH

Director: Pete Travis, 2004

On August 15, 1998, a car bomb exploded in Omagh, Northern Ireland killing 29 people and injuring some 220 others. It was the single worst act of terrorism in Northern Ireland in over thirty years. This film, produced for British television, revolves around the atrocity, the subsequent investigation, and the lives of the affected families.

THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

Director: Richard Loncraine, 2010

This TV drama focuses on the political relationship between Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. In 1994, Blair as Labour opposition leader travels to the US and is impressed by the centrist policies of the newly-elected Democrat president—on which he then models the political refashioning of his own party. After Blair becomes PM in 1997, the story shifts to the pair's handling of such temptestuous issues as Northern Ireland and Kovoso and the controversy surrounding the Lewinsky sex scandal.

THE JURY

Director: Pete Travis, 2003

In this four part mini-series produced for Granada Television, a jury is selected from a cross-section of British society to render a verdict in a racially charged case. Duvinder Singh, a Sikh schoolboy, is accused of murdering a white classmate who had continually bullied him. This series was filmed at the Old Bailey, the main London courthouse, and accurately portrays the inner workings of the British criminal justice system as well as the tense racial politics of contemporary urban Britain.

BRICK LANE

Director: Sarah Gavron, 2007

A young Bangladeshi woman, Nazneen, arrives in 1980s London, leaving behind her beloved sister and home, for an arranged marriage and a new life. Trapped within the four walls of her flat in East London, and in a loveless marriage with a middle-aged businessman, she fears her soul is quietly dying. Yet the free-thinking society that surrounds her eventually penetrates the traditions she holds dear, and slowly Nazneen awakens to her own ideas and her own choices. Based on the novel by Monica Ali.

THE FOOTBALL FACTORY

Director: Nick Love, 2004

A glimpse into the dark world of football hooliganism; one of Britain's worst social problems. The story centers around three generations of working-class English males obsessed with their football team, Chelsea, and with the drinking, drugs, violence, petty theft, and general "yob culture" that accompanies their identity as fans. A disturbing film that at times seems as much a celebration of football hooliganism as it is an exposé. Based on the bestselling novel by John King.

AE FOND KISS

Director: Ken Loach, 2004

Set in Glasgow, this film tells the story of a cross-cultural relationship between Qasim, an aspiring DJ of Pakistani descent and Roisín, an Irish Catholic piano instructor. Pressured by his parents to accept an arranged marriage with his cousin Yasmin, Qasim must choose between his love for Roisín and his duty to comply with the traditional values of his family and Muslim community. Meanwhile, Roisín is denied employment at a Catholic school unless she ceases living with a man (Qasim) who is not her husband.

FOUR LIONS

Director: Christopher Morris, 2010

This daring comedy tells the story of a hapless group of British jihadists with delusions of grandeur who attempt to transform their abstract dreams of glory and martyrdom into action. After a period of incomplete training in Pakistan, the young men return to Britain to carry out a suicide bombing during the London Marathon. An amazing film—on what is clearly a taboo subject—that manages to be tense, poignant, thought-provoking and very funny.

CHILDREN OF MEN

Director: Alfonso Cuarón, 2006

By 2027, all women have become inexplicably infertile and it is only a matter of time before the human race dies out. In Britain, this existential crisis has led to a breakdown of civil society and the rise of a police state with immigration, factionalism, and violence spinning out of control. Based on the 1992 novel by P.D. James, Children of Men is similar to Orwell's 1984 and Burgess' A Clockwork Orange as a dystopian vision of Britain's future that is really a critique of the time in which it was written.