Books by Andrew Spicer

This ground-breaking study provides an authoritative account of the career of this iconic star. It illuminates his early work, his role as James Bond and his later reinvention as father-mentor and screen legend. Drawing on a wide range of sources, it will be essential reading for those interested in the phenomenon of stardom. -- .

Evidence gleaned from archaeology sheds dramatic new light on religious practices and identities between the later sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries.

A lucid and informative account, drawing on unpublished material, of the career of one of the most successful and significant producers in British cinema. It provides discussion of all his films, including The Seventh Veil (1945), and affords an exceptional insight into the workings of the wartime and postwar British film and television industries. -- .

A wide-ranging and interdisciplinary study of the impact of the European Reformation on the architecture, arrangement and appearance of places of worship. -- .

Film noir_literally 'black cinema'_is the label customarily given to a group of black and white American films, mostly crime thrillers, made between 1940 and 1959. Today there is considerable dispute about what are the shared features that classify a noir film, and therefore which films should be included in this category. These problems are partly caused because film noir is a retrospective label that was not used in the 1940s or 1950s by the film industry as a production category and therefore its existence and features cannot be established through reference to trade documents. The Historical Dictionary of Film Noir is a comprehensive guide that ranges from 1940 to present day neo-noir. It consists of a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, a filmography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on every aspect of film noir and neo-noir, including key films, personnel (actors, cinematographers, composers, directors, producers, set designers, and writers), themes, issues, influences, visual style, cycles of films (e.g. amnesiac noirs), the representation of the city and gender, other forms (comics/graphic novels, television, and videogames), and noir's presence in world cinema. It is an essential reference work for all those interested in this important cultural phenomenon.

An overview of an often celebrated, but also contested, body of films. It discusses film noir as a cultural phenomenon whose history is more extensive and diverse than American black and white crime thrillers of the forties. An extended Background Chapter situates film noir within its cultural context.