Bøker av Mark Connelly

`We Can Take It!' shows that the British remember the war in a peculiar way, thanks to a mix of particular images and evidence. Our memory has been shaped by material which is completely removed from historical reality. These images (including complete inventions) have combined to make a new history. The vision is mostly cosy and suits the way in which the Britons conceive of themselves: dogged, good humoured, occasionally bumbling, unified and enjoying diversity. In fact Britons load their memory towards the early part of the war (Dunkirk, Blitz, Battle of Britain) rather than when we were successful in the air or against Italy and Germany with invasions. This suits our love of being the underdog, fighting against the odds, and being in a crisis. Conversely, the periods of the war during which Britain was in the ascendant are, perversely, far more hazy in the public memory.

This book examines the history and influence of the Group Theatre, the most significant acting company in America. Founded during the Great Depression, the Group presented the first plays of Clifford Odets, Sidney Kingsley, and William Saroyan, and launched the careers of Franchot Tone, John Garfield, Elia Kazan, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, Martin Ritt, and Luther Adler. The intense realism of their performances inspired generations of writers, actors, and directors in both theater and film. After the Group closed, its former members directed or produced the Broadway plays Brigadoon, A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, Camino Real, Bus Stop, The Music Man, Equus, and Yentl. In Hollywood, Group alumni produced, directed, or starred in the award-winning films On the Waterfront, East of Eden, Twelve Angry Men, Hud, Fail-Safe, 1776, Serpico, Network, Norma Rae, and The Verdict. Four of the nation's best-known acting teachers--Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner, Robert Lewis, and Stella Adler--came from the Group. The studios they established remain the most highly regarded acting schools in the world, with venues on four continents.

This illustrated history analyses celluloid depictions of the IRA from the 1916 Easter Rising to the peace process of the 1990s. Topics include America's role in creating both the IRA and its cinematic image, the organisation's brief association with the Nazis, and critical reception of IRA films in Ireland, Britain and the United States.

Provides an extensive chronology and 175 entries about both George Orwell's literary works and personal life. Also included are discussion questions and research topics, notable quotations by Orwell and an extensive bibliography of related sources.

A three-time National Book Award for Fiction winner, Saul Bellow is one of the most highly regarded American authors to emerge since World War II. His career produced 14 novels and novellas, two volumes of nonfiction, short story collections, plays and a book of collected letters. This companion provides more than 200 entries about his works, literary characters, events and persons in his life.

Three generations of critics have commented on the parallels between George Orwell and his favorite novelist, George Gissing. «I am a great fan of his,» Orwell wrote in 1948, proclaiming «that England has produced very few better novelists.» This in-depth study reveals that Orwell drew heavily on the Gissing novels he admired in shaping his own. Gissing's New Grub Street and The Odd Women directly influenced Orwell's Depression-era novels Keep the Aspidstra Flying and A Clergyman's Daughter. Even Orwell's most imaginative work, Animal Farm, mirrors Gissing's own novel of a failed Socialist Utopia, Demos. Gissing was Orwell's role model and alter ego. Gissing provided him with a touchstone to his beliefs, his pessimism, his love of Dickens and cozy corners, his suspicion of «progress,» his restless sexuality. To understand Orwell fully, one must first read Gissing.

British Instructional Films was at the centre of a number of issues important to Britain and the Empire in the 1920s: the memory and history of the Great War, national and imperial identities, the role of cinema as a shaper of attitudes and identities, power relations between Britain and the USA and the nature of popular culture as an international contest in its own right.

In its 80+ years, the Hardy Boys series has sold more than 50 million books in 25 or more languages, and has inspired five television series and many stage plays, websites, comic books, graphic novels and computer games. The series has shaped the way millions of American children see themselves and society, and has shaped the perceptions of America held by young people around the world. This book follows the creation and development of the series through 1979. Topics include the writing of Stratemeyer and McFarlane; the so-called "weird period"; the Cold War and the disco age; race, class and gender; family values; and law and order. Illustrations, bibliography, appendices and index.

This work examines the life and fiction of Charles Jackson, a pioneer gay writer who addressed taboo issues with insight and sensitivity. His stories about "outing", gay-bashing, molestation, and thrill killers are now more relevant in the 21st century than when they first appeared in the 1950s.

This detailed case study of a part of London shows how both the survivors and the bereaved sought to come to terms with the losses and implications of the Great War.

Explores how the memory of the Second World War continues to affect British contemporary life. This book explores the way in which the British memory of the Second World War was created during the war, and maintained after it through cultural artifacts such as films, comics, art, literature and toys.