[ecrea] New Book: The Holiday and British Film

I am pleased to announce the recent publication of Matthew Kerry's new book The Holiday and British Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 27 October 2011).

Using the history of the British holiday as a framework, Matthew Kerry offers a refreshing insight into a previously neglected area of popular British cinema – the holiday film. Looking at key films from the silent period to the recent past, Kerry considers how these representations may reinforce feelings of national identity. The book includes production histories and textual analyses of films such as A Seaside Girl (1907), Sing As We Go (1934), Bank Holiday (1938), Holiday Camp (1947), Hindle Wakes (1952), Summer Holiday (1963), The Best Pair of Legs in the Business (1973), Bhaji on the Beach (1993), and Last Resort (2000), and provides an exploration of their social function.

Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1: The British Holiday Film and its Audience
Chapter 2: Theorising the Holiday
Chapter 3: The Postcard Comes To Life: Early British Film and the Seaside
Chapter 4: Holidays With Pay: The Working Holidays of the 1930s
Chapter 5: Re-constructing the Family Holiday: The Holiday Camp in Postwar British Film
Chapter 6: From Austerity to Affluence: Holidays Abroad in Postwar British Film
Chapter 7: Grim Nostalgia and the Traditional British Holiday of the 1970s
Chapter 8: Interrogating National Identity in the Recent British Holiday Film
Conclusion – Summarising Representations of National Identity in the British Holiday Film
Select Filmography

For more information, please visit the Palgrave Macmillan website:

http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=508179

Reviews:
'This thorough, well-argued and well-documented study is carefully structured and lucidly written. Matthew Kerry not only analyses in detail all the major films relating to the holiday but also invaluably establishes their social, cultural and cinematic contexts decade by decade. He theorizes the holiday by reference to the established authorities (Bourdieu, Adorno, Debord, Urry, Bakhtin), and analyses their various approaches to the 'tourist gaze', spectacle, marginality and the carnivalesque. The whole adds up to a unique and valuable addition to the existing literature both of the cinema and the holiday.' - Jeffrey Richards, Lancaster University, UK

'This is a ground-breaking book. It makes a comprehensive analysis of the British holiday film, and shows its complexity and variability. Matthew Kerry lays out the crucial cultural tasks performed by the holiday film, and shows how its pleasures are presented. He locates film history within a broad social and cultural context in this valuable and wide-ranging book.'
- Sue Harper, Emeritus Professor of Film History, University of Portsmouth, UK

Dr Matthew Kerry is a lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, UK


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