This text represents the progress made in exploring the history of British cinema, providing a comprehensive account of a dynamic and growing area in film studies. This second edition has been expanded and includes 12 new contributors. It extends coverage of topics such as British silent cinema in the 1920s, looking back at the British new wave, spectacle and the Boy's Own tradition in British cinema, the cinema of excess of the 1970s, British cinema and American aspirations; Celtic traditions in British cinema, the revival of the British gangster film, and the urban fairy tale in the late 1990s.