Interview with Tony (University of Reading) Feb 1997
ÔKICKING OVER THE TRACESÕ ø Interview with Tony Garnett
Dr M K MacMumraugh-Kavanagh, University of Reading

Beginning as a television actor in the late 1950s, capitalising upon the contemporary vogue for working-class, regionalÕ performers, Tony Garnett became a story editor in Sydney NewmanÕs revolutionary BBC Drama Group in 1964, and was swiftly promoted to the post of producer working on The Wednesday Play. His work during this period included groundbreaking dramas such as Nell DunnÕs Up the Junction (1965), Jeremy SandfordÕs Cathy Come Home (1966), and David MercerÕs In Two Minds (1968), each directed by Loach. Through their work on these and similar projects, Garnett and Loach were thus central to the development of the frequently controversial Ôdrama-docÕ genre.

In 1968, Garnett decided against renewing his contract with the BBC and, together with Ken Trodd, David Mercer and James Mac Taggart, established an independent production company, Kestrel Productions. The venture proved short-lived but GarnettÕs freelance career as a film and television producer had been launched. He subsequently combined projects in British television (including the controversial Law and Order) and Hollywood cinema (including Handgun) and his successful independent company, World Productions, produced BBC 2Õs cult series This Life, the popular hits Ballykissangel and Sharman, and several other high-profile television dramas.

The interview presented here took place in November 1996 at GarnettÕs offices in London. Though he protests that his interest in his past work is minimal in comparison with his interest in current projects, he proved extremely illuminating in his appraisal of his contribution to The Wednesday Play collection of single television dramas (1964 - 1970). The interview was conducted as part of the four-year research project, ÔThe Wednesday Plays & Post-War British DramaÕ currently in progress at the University of Reading and funded by the British Academy and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The interview begins with GarnettÕs overall assessment of this strand of single television plays and of the prevalent mood within the BBC at this time. In discussing his work on The Wednesday Play, Garnett subsequently indicates several levels of debate which are of immense interest to all readers concerned at teaching and research level with the evolution of post-war television drama as a socio-cultural and ÔpoliticalÕ discourse.

Q
How do you assess the BBC as an organisation in the 1960Õs? Was its hierarchy receptive to the new ideas that you and people like you were promoting in the field of television drama in particular?

A
The BBC at that time was a very confident organisation. Two things had started to happen during the 1960s: first was the move into BBC 2 - when you re in an expansionary frame of mind, you feel optimistic. Second, colour was starting to be introduced and was bringing in an increased stream of income. As a result, there was the promise of more money to spend on everything.

In addition to that, the climate of the times was, to use the word of the time, permissiveÕ. There was a feeling amongst sections of the Socialist-Liberal Establishment that one of the measures of their contribution to society was their capacity to allow. And the Socialist-Liberal end of the Establishment was well-represented within the BBC. But at the same time, Mary Whitehouse had started to make trouble and the bosses at the BBC, under the relaxed, open-minded and liberal leadership of [Hugh Canton] Greene, became split inside themselves. On the one hand, the last thing they wanted was to get into trouble. The last thing they wanted was bad headlines and questions in the House. On the other hand, most of them were ex-programme-makers who had their own consciences and feelings about what they were doing in the world to consider. And in a way they each felt justified in their existence by their enabling capacity, the capacity just to allow programme-makers to make programmes.

So I had to dodge around their tendency to play safe but I was able to take advantage of their need to feel good about themselves. What I and my colleagues were doing at that time was, in effect, to be a younger version of themselves, a self that they either wished they were again, or wished they had been. So the whole matter canÕt be reduced down to a Ôyoung Turk versus reactionary EstablishmentÕ equation because the true situation was a great deal more complicated than that

Q
The arrival of the dynamic, pioneering Sydney Newman in 1983 (poached from ABC TV in 1962) must have marked a radical shift in the atmosphere of BBC Drama Group. How would you assess Newman, his impact on BBC Drama, and his attitude towards you?

A
Sydney was a very sophisticated, faux-naive operator. He had survived General Motors Theatre in Canada so this was a man for whom British television was, politically, playground stuff. HeÕd made a huge hit of Armchair Theatre and had been brought in to the BBC to make its drama competitive against commercial television. When Sydney arrived, BBC drama was very much given to ÔBoulevardÕ plays typical of the West End, all French windows and Ôanyone for tennis?Õ! It was safe, innocuous stuff, and commercial television was killing the BBC in the ratings.

Sydney was a great goader and a great protector. He was also unafraid. Lads like me might have made some managements frightened and therefore punishing and censorious, but he was just too grown up in the ways of the world for someone like me to be threatening. That meant that he was able to allow me and indulge me in several excesses but at the same time advise me against committing suicide

Q
What kind of excesses do you mean?

A
Well, there was a BBC policy in those days, called Ôproducer-powerÕ, of which I took full advantage. You were supposed to refer upwards when you had a show that was giving you problems or when a show was likely to cause some embarrassment to the BBC, or whatever. The rule was that if you didnÕt refer upwards when you ought to have done, then you were in trouble: otherwise, you were just left alone to get on with it. ItÕs almost unimaginable now with the centralisation of power but then there was this devolution of real programme-making power to the producer. This was bliss and obviously we took full advantage of it. My attitude was that the management were terribly busy people and I didnÕt want to bother them with details!

Q
Since several of the dramas you produced proved so controversial and forced the BBC into a defensive position, this must have backfired on you a number of times.

A
I just did what I could to hide away and Sydney helped me there. A day or so after Cathy Come Home was transmitted, the Press went mad. Sydney told me to let Jeremy (Sandford, author) deal with it, and Ken (Loach, director) if he wanted to. But he advised me to keep my head down. And he was absolutely right. He was protecting me within the BBC and I lived to fight another day.

I was also protected by Ned Sherrin in a way. That Was The Week That Was was done on Saturdays. I knew that the BBC could only really deal with one crisis a week so I used to watch TWTWTW every Saturday praying that Ned was going to get into trouble again. I knew that if Ned caused a problem on Saturday, IÕd be alright on the following Wednesday! But Ned had a wonderful way of dealing with trouble - he could charm his way out of anything. Even so, I was always so grateful to him

Q
Was it in the interests of Ôhiding awayÕ that you increasingly avoided the press as the 1960s progressed?

A
Yes. I thought IÕd just keep my head down and get on with the shows. If IÕd become involved in regular, public debates with people like Mary Whitehouse, it could only

have helped them and not me. Which is why, as the years went on, I decided to keep a low public profile because if you take the temptation of your vanity to become a public person, theyÕll get you. But if thereÕs nothing to fire at except the show itself, you can get underneath it and get on with the next one. IÕve never regretted the decision I made then because itÕs given me a lot more freedom in my work to be that figure they canÕt quite put their finger on

Q
Was Newman, with his vision of a ÔcontemporaryÕ and socially-extended drama, a major influence on you in your work?

A
Sydney was a big influence because he was a heavyweight and, in those days, the head of an output group had the same status as the controller of the channel. Sydney virtually told the Controller what drama was going to be transmitted on BBC1. He was the expert; he was the Ôdrama manÕ. It doesnÕt happen like that now because the Controller buys everything individually. Now, itÕs more like a Hollywood studio where one man decides everything.

So I was influenced by Sydney and we were protected by him. I had the most enormous rows with him on a regular basis - screaming matches with veins bulging in the forehead and so on! But it was always a Ôgood, cleanÕ row and always over when it was over. In the end, I was like the adolescent in a family who wonÕt obey the rules and kicks over the traces, but he was like the wise parent who stopped me going too far and from finding myself in serious trouble. At the same time, he actually encouraged me in going too far to some extent because something lively was getting on the screen as a result. Newman was an excellent example of broadcasting management at its best.

Q
He seems, at the same time, to have been a rather mercurial spirit, antagonising many members of BBC personnel and hierachy apparently deliberately.

A
He was mischievous, yes. I remember James MacTaggart inviting me to go and work for him, and had to have an interview with Sydney. I first met him in his office which was bigger than most of the flats IÕd lived in, having been marched in by Jim McTaggart and Roger Smith. I expected a big, formal interview but instead Sydney looked at Jim and said, ÔHell, I donÕt know what to askÕ. Then at me, ÔOh hell. Did you see the show last night?Õ "The Show", as he put it, was Hamlet, shot as an Outside Broadcast at Elsinore by Philip Saville. I had seen it and launched into a pompous and pretentious critique. He listened. DidnÕt interrupt, a little smile playing on his face. I finally shut up. ÔWellÕ, he said, ÔPhilip wanted to do it and I didnÕt know the playÕ. What did he mean, he didnÕt know the play? This was the Head of BBC Drama! Was this his faux-naive trick or did he mean it? I should have asked him.

ThereÕs another wonderful Newman story I can tell you. A very pretentious BBC director had a script that he wanted to direct and he called Sydney and said he was keen to do it because it reminded one so much of Ionesco. Sydney responded: ÔIan who?Õ

Q
If Newman was central to the new mood within BBC Drama Group at this time, Hugh Carlton Greene, whom youÕve mentioned, was vital to the direction the BBC moved in throughout the 1960s. What did you make of Greene from the point of view of working within the organisation he modelled?

A
Greene was a patrician: he was the best and worst of the BBC. He summed up much of what the BBC is. I only met him once and it had nothing to do with programme-making. When I went to the BBC, first as a script-editor then as a producer, I was on a short-term contract and was active in the ACTT union. The BBC didnÕt recognise the ACTT preferring its own tame house union. I was on the executive of the ACTT and had been elected as the BBC shop steward and, with the officials of the ACTT, we went to Broadcasting House one day to meet with Greene to try to persuade him to recognise the union. It was my first experience of that English mandarin behaviour. There was silver-service tea and biscuits and we had a delightfully good-mannered forty-five minutes during which we talked about everything and nothing. We put the unionÕs case; he smiled and was most gracious and we were out on the streets before we even knew weÕd been there!

Q
At the same time, though, Greene was surely a progressive influence, protecting the BBC from the potentially destructive intervention of Mary Whitehouse and her pressure-group. Equally, he miscalculated the Whitehouse campaign badly. Do you regard his handling of her and of the issues she raised as flawed?

A
Yes, Green did protect the freedom of programme-makers, particularly those working on TWTWTW and The Wednesday Play. But a snobbish, metropolitan attitude towards Mary Whitehouse caused him to underestimate her and he was tactically mistaken in the way he dismissed her because it put an extra edge to her antagonism towards the BBC. He thought that she was merely a provincialÕ housewife whereas in fact she was formidable

Q
In some ways, you admired her then?

A
I debated with her a few times and she was interesting, bright, and very, very courageous. You patronised her at your peril. When I worked on Up the Junction and then Cathy Come Home, we came into open conflict. SheÕs no pushover in debate and anybody who thinks they can go in and debate her off the floor is in for a rude surprise. SheÕs as tough as nails and, when thereÕs an unexpected argument, she can think on her feet. So although all her Christian right-wing views are anathema to me IÕve always admired her courage because itÕs almost impossible now to imagine what she was up against at that time. The left-wing, liberal, permissiveÕ consensus was total, and she, almost on her own, stood up against it to derision and insult and highly abusive personal criticism. That took great courage

Q
Turning now towards your work on The Wednesday Play: you were involved in the strand from its earliest days in 1964. What can you remember of the origins of the series, the negotiations that produced it and how would you define its original remit?

A
Sydney (Newman] had decided that he wanted some attention grabbing and tough contemporary drama on the screen on a Wednesday night and he wanted a long-running anthology series. James MacTaggart [producer in charge of the first full season of plays], Roger Smith [story editor] and I were told to prepare about thirty plays for the new series and weÕd spent 1964 preparing. We were due to begin transmission in Autumn 1964 but Donald Baverstock blocked it. We became very down-hearted but Sydney took us out to the terrace of the BBC club and asked us why we were so depressed. We told him that weÕd spent all year developing shows which were now delayed until the New Year and probably delayed indefinitely but Sydney replied: ÔOh, Baverstock. DonÕt worry about Baverstock. HeÕs dead but he doesnÕt know it yetÕ. Two months later, Baverstock resigned.

Baverstock hadnÕt wanted the single play because he didnÕt believe that the anthology series could get the ratings. By and large with The Wednesday Play, we proved him wrong. We deliberately transmitted some that we knew wouldnÕt attract a big audience but we would always put one in front and one behind that we knew would hold it up. So our ratings went from as low as 3 or 4 million, up to 13 million

Q
What sort of plays were always destined to be ratings-losers?

A
Well, if youÕre going to put on a new, very difficult David Mercer play, youÕre not going to get a big audience. But we felt it was our job to represent this kind of ÔdifficultÕ drama occasionally

Q
How did your connection with Ken Loach begin?

A
I met Ken when I acted in a play called Kathleen which was produced by James MacTaggart and directed by Ken. It was a studio production and we had to go up to Manchester to do it. Studio production in those days involved multi-cameras with cables everywhere. Ken was never at home in this environment

Q
When did the idea of rejecting the studio in favour of film drama first strike you and Loach?

A
We had started to employ Ken on The Wednesday Play. The drama, of course, was mainly studio-bound and I was getting more and more tired of it. I often talked to Ken about my frustration with the limitations of the studio and these conversations had made me decide that I wanted Ken and myself to go out and make films on location using 16mm film. The BBC was horrified. Michael Peacock, Controller of BBC1, rejected the idea on the grounds that he wanted ÔAÕ plays rather than ÔBÕ movies in The Wednesday Play slot. His attitude, which was not unreasonable when you think about it from his point of view, was that he didnÕt see how we could go out on location, shoot for three weeks on a very tight budget and come back with a full-length film that would be of the sort of standard that the BBC would want to transmit. Also, the BBC had spent a great deal of money building new studios and they wanted them used

Q
So how did your point of view prevail?

A
I hammered away at Sydney and at Michael Peacock. In the end, Michael agreed to let me do one location shoot, given that I had offered to make it for the same amount of money as a studio-bound drama. When Sydney told me that I had permission to begin work on it, he asked me why I wanted to die so young!

So we had permission to go ahead but then I had to negotiate with the BBC studios at Ealing (Ealing Film Studios). I thought they would welcome the move but I had a terrible battle with them. They wanted to prevent me from going ahead because they felt that 16mm was of too low a standard for drama and best suited to news and documentaries whereas 35mm was best-suited to drama. I told them that there was no way I wanted to do drama on 35mm: IÕd seen Breathless, really admired CoutardÕs camera work on that, and had a vision of the sort of drama I wanted to do.

My motivation in this was political too. We wanted to take the camera into the real world, to observe in a way that you couldnÕt do in the studio. The battle I had with Ealing to allow us to use 16mm was terrible but once weÕd started, of course, and made a few more, it became a stampede. Writers wanted to write for film, most of the directors wanted to get out on location and within a few years drama film was one of the biggest things that had ever happened to Eating. It expanded their operation hugely but it was a terrible battle to get them to agree to it in the first place

Q
What can you remember of those early, experimental days of filming using 16mm? You must have been finding your way as production was in progress.

A
Our first films were black and white and we were working with very tight budgets. Tony lmi, a huge man, was the cameraman. HeÕd put this camera on his shoulder and walk around with it all day

Q
The first productions caused quite a stir an this must have altered your status within the BBC Drama Group. What sort of deal were you able to negotiate with the BBC in relation to your own position in their wake?

A
After the first film we made [Up the Junction], I subsequently signed a contract with the BBC to make just four films a year. I never went on the staff and I always made sure that after a stint at the BBC I would go off and do a feature film or something else before going back to the BBC again for another stint. I didnÕt want them to think that they ÔownedÕ me in any way and always reminded them that I could earn a living elsewhere. They paid me to make four films a year and thatÕs what I gave them. I worked without a script editor and produced four feature-length films a year from scratch. Most people now would say thatÕs more than a full yearÕs work and I did work very hard

Q
In selecting the subjects for your four films, what sort of audience were you trying to reach? Did you have a specific audience in mind, and did you act upon information supplied by the BBC Audience Research Reports or tend to ignore their findings?

A
I never ignored them because IÕve always been very interested in the audience. You go into television because you want to reach a big audience. What we were saying at the time, and what IÕm still saying, is that we want the biggest possible audience but we want to get it the difficult way. ItÕs not difficult to get a large audience if thatÕs the only thing youÕre interested in. All you have to do is stage a public hanging on a Saturday afternoon and put some cameras on it. The nation watches. So thereÕs no problem in just getting an audience. And itÕs very easy to be serious and get a small audience. The task in television is how to be both serious and popular at the same time.

So you have to try and deal with a subject as seriously as you can and tell the tale in as available a way as you can find. Often, you fail. Most of the time we had no idea what shows would have an impact and get a big audience or vice-versa (unless it was something really arcane like one of David MercerÕs) because itÕs so difficult to second-guess the public

Q
But one way to be both ÔseriousÕ and ÔpopularÕ, one way to capture this fickle public, is to use shock tactics as in Up the Junction. This was surely a deliberate audience-attracting (and political) strategy?

A
No question about it! We only got Up the Junction made and on the air in the first place because James MacTaggart [the producer in overall charge of The Wednesday Play strand for the forthcoming season, Autumn 1965] was away on holiday. Nell (Dunn] had written the book and we green-lighted it while James was away on holiday, managing to get it very far down the road by the time he got back. He looked at the script that had been cobbled out of NellÕs book and said: ÔWeÕre not going to try and make this? This is terrible! ThereÕs no story and itÕs all over the placeÕ. He was right - from the conventional point of view. But by the time heÕd got back from holiday, it was almost impossible for him to cancel it.

There was an element of Ôshock tacticÕ in the film because the Abortion Law Reform Act was up before Parliament which was one of the reasons we wanted to do NellÕs book. I persuaded my own GP to provide the voice-over for when Ruby was having the abortion on the kitchen table. Ken and I were very keen on Brecht at the time! Just calmly and coolly, with that doctorÕs voice, he gave the statistics of the deaths from backstreet abortions. So, yes, there was quite definitely a political agenda in these shock-tactic devices. The same agenda was involved in Cathy Come Home, though when Cathy was transmitted and caused the enormous furore that it did, we were all taken by suprise

Q
Raymond Williams said of you in 1968 that when you used the word ÔpoliticsÕ or ÔpoliticalÕ, you actually meant ÔsocietyÕ in wider terms. Up the Junction and Cathy Come Rome demonstrate what he meant because, although you cite a Ôpolitical agendaÕ, both plays transcended ÔpoliticsÕ in any party-political sense.

A
Oh, yes. Funnily enough, Cathy Come Home had been rejected by the BBC a couple of years before, It was originally submitted as a little outline under the totally uncommercial title, The Abyss. But we just quietly went ahead and prepared it anyway. When Jeremy [Sandford] had first begun researching the subject there had been a Tory government but by the time the programme was made and transmitted there was a new Labour government who therefore took the stick. Ken and I didnÕt mind that at all and Jeremy wasnÕt as ÔpoliticalÕ as we were. I remember being called along to the Ministry of Housing to meet the Minister who asked us for our advice about the housing crisis. He said, ÔWell, what do you think we should do?Õ
Ken and I just looked at each other and replied, ÔHow about building some more housesÕ

Q
Cathy Come Home was recognised as addressing a social problem rather than as being keyed into ÔpoliticalÕ debate. Up the Junction is similarly a play of ÔsocialÕ rather than party-political concern. Yet where Cathy generated a consensus of agreement, sharp division marked the response to Up the Junction. For one thing, some interpreted Up the Junction as a ÔmoralÕ tale depicting the Ôwages of sinÕ while others read it as a subversive advertisement for the Ôpermissive societyÕ! Do you think that thereÕs any way for a producer or director of television drama to limit the margins of response and interpretation?

A
No, there is no way this can be done. My attitudes towards issues like this have changed, though. When I was younger, I was very narrowly political in focus and, in the arrogance of youth, I thought that we could make a film and change the world. Now I know we canÕt and so IÕm less prescriptive now than I was then.

But we had a far worse case of audience misinterpretation than with Up the Junction. John Hopkins wrote a play called Fable [1965, dramatising a reverse-apartheid England where whites were the persecuted race in a society controlled by Black oppressors]. We thought HopkinsÕ play would show all the right-wing Whites what itÕs like to be persecuted. In the event, of course, the play did no such thing and resulted only in us receiving masses of calls from National Front supporters congratulating us for the ÔwarningÕ weÕd delivered. We were mortified because we realised that weÕd made a huge error. On paper, going in to the project, it looked as though John Hopkins had come up with an extremely clever idea.

That was a great lesson to me. It taught me that you must always appreciate what the visual experience of a television play is going to be - not the literary experience on the page, nor what the underlying idea intends to be, but what is physically on the screen. In this case, what was physically on the screen was a lot of black people kicking the hell out of a lot of white people. We were not smart enough to anticipate the effect that would have

Q
James MacTaggart was the producer in charge of the seasons of Wednesday Plays in which Up the Junction and Fable were transmitted. What was his position in relation to your work and in relation to these controversies?

A
Jim was a crucial figure because he was a BBC Establishment-stamped, trusted person. The hierachy could feel comfortable with these wild lads around provided Jim was there to handle them. At the same time, he was extremely innovative, open-minded and, again, allowing. He was also a very fine human being and an underestimated man

Q
Turning now to In Two Minds, the film produced by you and directed by Leach from David MercerÕs play: again, the film uses, in loose terms, the strategies of drama-doc in its LaingÑinspired analysis of a ÔschizophrenicÕ girl. In many ways, the film is a Ôcase studyÕ not of the girl, but of modern psychiatric practice (and malpractice). What attracted you to this subject, and what was the motivation for the use of drama-doc strategies in this text?

A
Two years after weÕd made In Two Minds for television, we made Family Life, a film of the same play [1971, directed by Ken Loach]. ItÕs the only subject IÕve ever had two bites of the cherry at. I was interested in the topic because of a personal experience and David Mercer had also known the person involved in this. We were both interested in psychoanalysis as a subject as well and knew Ronnie Laing [RD. Laing] and that group of people. We talked to Ronnie and, drawing from conversations with him and drawing obviously from his books, David Mercer wrote the screenplay of In Two Minds. I wanted Roy Battersby to direct it at first but I couldnÕt extract him from the Science and Features Department where he was stuck, working for Aubrey Singer. I hired Ken Loach because Roy wasnÕt free.

David and I in particular were very, very taken with the idea that schizophrenia was a dustbin diagnosis. I still think this is true in many ways, although now I wouldnÕt want to make a drama about it in the same way. First of all, we structured the film in such a way that it ended up being bleak. I suppose we were all so depressed at the time and we thought that the only way to do a serious show was to have a bleak ending - the English attitude towards pleasure! Secondly, I think that there was too much of an indication that the mother was to blame for the girlÕs situation and that wasnÕt helpful. The performances, though, were excellent. Ken and the actors did a brilliant job

Q
Do you agree that one of the most important aspects of your work on The Wednesday Play, in plays such as Cathy Come Home, The Lump and In Two Minds, was your challenge to the concept of televisual ÔobjectivityÕ?

A
Anyone who ever said they believed in BBC objectivity is either naïve or pulling the wool over your eyes. But it was in this area that I came into conflict with Grace Wyndham Goldie [Head of BBC Talks and Current Affairs]. She wanted my work to be stopped because she argued that the shows were not objective and were transgressing her area. She became a bitter enemy.

In those days, I used to say that the most accomplished piece of regular fiction on the BBC was the 9 OÕClock news and I still believe that. You donÕt have to know much about Eisenstein to understand that if you have an image on the news of some dockers on strike, preceding it with news about very bad balance of payments this month, and after it a very reasonable interview with a boss of the docks saying, ÔI do wish theyÕd go back to work or come to arbitrationÕ, if you just present it like that, then youÕve made a judgement on the dockers

Q
But thatÕs the idea of ÔflowÕ, and you made full use of it yourself in your work in television drama at this time.

A
But we declared it. I have never said that we were trying to be objective. In fact, I said that itÕs impossible to be objective even if you try

Q
Is this your response to the contemporary complaint that you were consciously misleading the audience as to the nature of the ÔrealityÕ they were viewing in the television dramas you produced at this time. This is the complaint: in short, that you developed the drama-doc form to deliberately disguise ÔfictionÕ as ÔfactÕ?

A
I always said clearly that we deal in fiction, not in ÔfactÕ. In all the films with which IÕve been involved, we went out into the world and researched and researched and researched. Then we came back and made it all up. We make it up - thatÕs what we do. The film is written by somebody, produced by somebody, directed by somebody and it is quite clear with the audience that these are actors, that it has been made up, that it is a fiction. Now if the audience wants to enter into this little conceit with us, the willing suspension of disbelief because of the style we put on it, then thatÕs fine. But I maintain that throughout my working life IÕve kept better faith with the audience, despite my declared political agenda, than news or documentary-makers have ever done

This interview is submitted as part of the British Academy and HEFCEfunded project, ÔThe 660 Wednesday Plays & Post-War British DramaÕ currently in progress at the University of Reading. Dr Madeleine MacMurraugh-Kavanagh is the PostDoctoral Fellow on the project which is now in its third year. Publications arising from the work have appeared in Media Education Journal, Screen, and The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, and two full-length books based on the research will be published in 1999.

For enquiries relating to the research project, contact Madeleine MacMurraughKavanagh at the Department of Film & Drama, University of Reading, Bulmershe Court, Earley, Reading, RG6 I HY.

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