The monthly roundup of film and television publications compiled by Simon Baker, Institute of Historical Research, & published here at the BUFVC by Linda Kaye.

This month’s issue of Media Screen Roundup opens with a special section from Labor Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas on the television series The Wire. The section places the drama in its socio-historical context focusing on the depiction of race, class, trade union, gender and urban decay.

There are two useful dictionaries for students of British cinema, Alan Burton’s Historical Dictionary of British Cinema and Cotter’s The Women of Hammer Horror : A Biographical Dictionary and Filmography which features actress and women behind the camera.

Oddly there are two books on ancient history and film, Pantelis and Wyke’s, The Ancient World in Silent Cinema and Joanna Paul’s Film and the Classical Epic Tradition.

Another intriguing book is Patrica Holland’s Broadcasting and the NHS in the Thatcherite 1980s : The Challenge to Public Service. The book looks at two key services, broadcasting and the National Health Service, and traces the debates and political pressures which radically transformed them both during the 1980s and early 1990s. It looks at how medical issues were treated on the radio and in television, from popular drama to investigative journalism. The book also looks at the politics of broadcasting, with the advent of Channel Four and the attacks on the BBC.

Media Screen Roundup (Dec 2013) IHR-BUFVC (PDF 242KB)