A New History of British Documentary

Documentary was once described as 'Britain's outstanding contribution to the film', though most accounts have focused narrowly on the group of film-makers associated with documentary's figureheard, John Grierson. A New History of British Documentary looks at the subject afresh and offers the first comprehensive overview of documentary from early film to the present day.

James Chapman argues that the privileging of Grierson and the documentary movement of the 1930s in most standard histories has eclipsed the rich tradition of non-fiction film-making that existed in Britain during the silent period, and has led many commentators to regard the decades after the Second World War as a period of stagnation and decline. Instead, Chapman suggests that a full assessment of documentary's place in British film and television history should also consider the pre- and post-Grierson documentary and the extent to which documentary practice has adapted in response to changing institutional and ideological contexts.

A New History of British Documentary offers a balanced assessment of the achievements of the documentary movement but also considers the place of alternative and oppositional documentary practices in British film and television culture.

James Chapman is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Leicester, UK, and editor of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. His previous work includes The British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda, 1939-1945 (1998), Licence To Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films (1999) and Past and Present: National Identity and the British Historical Film (2005). He is also co-editor (with Mark Glancy and Sue Harper) of The New Film History: Sources, Methods, Approaches.