Christopher Godden

Review of periodical literature published in 2012

Review of periodical literature published in 2012 which concerns economic and social history of Britain and Ireland in the period 1500-1700

Review of periodical literature published in 2012: Review of Periodical Literature

Review of periodical literature published in 2012 which concerns economic and social history of Britain and Ireland in the period 1500-1700

Priestley's England: J.B. Priestley and English Culture. By John Baxendale.

of Pleasures (Exeter, 2000) applied the methods of business history to analyse film preferences based on the seating capacity of cinemas and the length of each film’s run. And the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television has published articles on cinema-going in Bolton based on the Mass-Observation reports (Jeffrey Richards) and on attendances at the Regent Cinema in Portsmouth due to the fortuitous survival of its account books (Sue Harper). The principal achievement of Hanson’s book is to bring together these micro-sources into a survey of cinema exhibition from the first public film show in Britain (at the Regent Street Polytechnic on 21 February 1896) to the rise of the multiplex and the ‘digital revolution’. Hanson shows how film exhibition developed rapidly from a novelty attraction to become an essential leisure activity by the First World War, by which time the division of the industry into production, distribution and exhibition sectors was institutionalized. He charts the arrival of ‘talkies’ in the late 1920s, the ‘golden age’ of cinema as mass entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s, the long decline of the 1950s and 1960s as the cinema audience fragmented, and the revival of cinema-going spurred by the multiplex and the blockbuster. The recurring theme is the extent to which distribution has been dominated by US interests. If the debates over the effects of ‘Americanization’ on popular culture are familiar, it is nevertheless useful to have them rehearsed again, not least because Hanson locates them within a historical framework by examining the shifting political economy of the film industry. This is a valuable survey, the first comprehensive study of its kind for Britain. My only complaint is that, in common with other titles in Manchester University Press’s ‘Studies in Popular Culture’ series, the book has been printed in a small and unattractive typeface that suggests an economy-conscious publishing decision.