Wartime Cinema, Englishness and Propaganda

This book provides a fresh analysis of the wartime work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and their team ‘the Archers’. It argues that in their earlier work, Powell and Pressburger should be seen as middlebrow storytellers whose stories explore national identity in times of war. Their wartime work is discussed in four phases: the first phase covers their contributions to the ‘phoney war’, the second traces their engagement with the ‘people’s war’. The third phase sees the Archers move beyond propaganda, towards memodramas of Englishness. The fourth phase dramatizes post-war preoccupations with an increasing focus on memory and trauma. The book also looks at Pressburger’s later work, including his two published novels Killing a Mouse on Sunday and The Glass Pearls.