Films recreating or addressing 'the past' - recent or distant, actual or imagined - have been a mainstay of British cinema since the silent era. From Elizabeth to Carry On Up The Khyber, and from the heritage-film debate to issues of authenticity and questions of genre, British Historical Cinema explores the ways in which British films have represented the past on screen, the issues they raise and the debates they have provoked. Discussing films from biopics to literary adaptations, and from depictions of Britain's colonial past to the re-imagining of recent decades...

Films set in the past - recent or distant, real or imagined - have been the mainstay of British cinema since the silent era, popular with audiences both at home and abroad. Yet this popularity has also been made the historical film one of British cinema's most controversial genres, and a target for critical derision.

The concept of 'heritage cinema' is now firmly established as an influential - as well as much-debated and contested - critical framework for the discussion of period or historical representation in film, most prominently with reference to British heritage and 'post-heritage' film successes since the 1980s, but also to comparable examples from Europe, North America and beyond. These successes have ranged from Merchant Ivory's A Room with a View, Maurice, Howards End and The Remains of the Day, via Jane Austen adaptations such as Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility to post-heritage adaptations...