Launder and Gilliat

Launder and Gilliat formed one of the central partnerships in British film history as screenwriters of Hitchcock and Carol Reed films and auteurs in their own right. Bruce Babington's study of the pair is notable for its contextualizing within English and British culture over four decades, including British Cinema's 'golden age' of the war and post-war years, and its close reading of films that have been critically neglected, despite their popularity. From Waterloo Road to The Happiest Days of Your Life, their films registered the 'ideological climate' of wartime and post-war Britain in engaging and creative ways.