Ken Loach

JOHN HILL is Professor of Media at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of Sex, Class and Realism: British Cinema 1956–63 (1986), British Cinema in the 1980s (1999) and Cinema and Northern Ireland: Film, Culture and Politics (2006), the co-author of Cinema and Ireland (1987) and the co-editor of various collections, including The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (1998).

• Acknowledgements.- Introduction.- Towards 'a new drama for television': Diary of a Young Man and The End of Arthur's Marriage.- 'Urgently contemporary and socially relevant': From Tap on the Shoulder to Up the Junction.- Blurring 'the distinction between fact and fiction': Cathy Come Home, In Two Minds and The Golden Vision.- 'The play of political advocacy': The Big Flame and The Rank and File.- From Television into Film: Poor Cow, Kes and Family Life.- 'This is our history': Days of Hope.- 'The UK's pre-eminent arthouse director': from television censorship to 'art cinema'.- 'It's a Free World': Social Change and Class from Riff-Raff to Looking For Eric.- What Might Have Been: Land and Freedom and The Wind that Shakes the Barley.- Select Bibliography.- Filmography.- Index.

Not only offers a detailed critical study of virtually Loach's entire output from the now-lost BBC play Catherine (1964) to his most recent feature Route Irish (2010), but also explores the internal and external politics governing their production and reception, in often fascinating detail... [This is] clearly the most important addition to Loach scholarship since Graham Fuller's book-length 1998 interview Loach on Loach