ReFocus: The Films of Lindsay Anderson

Will Kitchen taught film, media and cultural industries at the University of Southampton, the University of Chichester and Arts University Bournemouth. He is the author of several books, including Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work (2025), Film, Negation and Freedom: Capitalism and Romantic Critique (2023) and Romanticism and Film: Franz Liszt and Audio-Visual Explanation (2020).

• FiguresAcknowledgementsNotes on ContributorsForeword - Erik HedlingIntroduction - Will Kitchen 1. “Usual stimulating awful marvellous Northern urban landscape”: Authorship, Poetry & Placemaking in Lindsay Anderson’s 1960s Filmography - Jonny Smith 2. The White Bus and Townscape - Kevin M. Flanagan 3. “A poetic version of a News of the World story”: Gender, Realism and Single Motherhood in This Sporting Life - Isabelle Kemp 4. Boarding School Stories: A Critical Reflection on Lindsay Anderson’s If.... - Adam Locks 5. Ego and Alter Ego: Malcolm McDowell in the Films of Lindsay Anderson - Robert Shail 6. The Angry Young Man Strikes: An Exploration into Lindsay Anderson’s Political Satires - Sony Jalarajan Raj and Adith K. Suresh 7. “He’s not what people expect a working-class writer to be”: Class, Region and Realism in the work of David Storey and Lindsay Anderson - David Forrest 8. In Celebration of a Brilliant Craftsman: The Strange Likeness of Lindsay Anderson, William Wyler and Anthony Asquith - Brian Hoyle 9. “Crass stupidity”: The Critics and The Old Crowd - Julian Petley 10. Spine-Chilling Possibilities: Britannia Hospital and British Horror Production - James Leggott 11. Becoming Flesh: Queer Vulnerabilities in Britannia Hospital - Benedict Morrison 12. If You Were There…: The Legacy of Free Cinema - Will Edwards 13. The Popularity of The Whales of August and a Short History of Lindsay Anderson in Japan -Sawako Omori 14. Bette, Lilian and Lindsay – and The Whales of August - Brian McFarlane Index

Anderson was famously cynical about the growth of academic Film Studies, but he might surely have relished this collection of in-depth scholarly essays: authors ranging widely in nationality as in age, from Scotland to Japan, from Sweden to Australia, testify to the freshness of his films and his legacy. An important book on a major figure in British cinema.