Cinema Essentials

Fortunately for the rest of Europe, Nazi Germany never did succeed in its efforts to invade Great Britain. Following the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in France in 1940, a German invasion across the English Channel seemed to be imminent. But with the Germans unable to gain air superiority over southern England during the Battle of Britain, the plans for invasion had to be abandoned.  But the counterfactual "What If?" of a successful German invasion of Britain in World War II has turned up in books, TV series and films many times since then. Here are some of the times the Nazis did successfully invade - at least in film and TV. A scene from  It Happened Here (1964) Miss Grant Goes to the Door (1940) This short film was made in the early days of World War II, when the British population was steeling itself for the possibility of invasion. The film stars Mary Clare and Martita Hunt as two sisters dealing with Nazi spies and paratroopers in the first

Jane was the curvaceous comic strip heroine who helped to keep the British end up during World War II. She was the creation of cartoonist Norman Pett, who produced her adventures in serial form in the Daily Mirror newspaper from 1932 until 1959, originally as  Jane's Journal, The Diary of a Bright Young Thing . But it was during the Second World War that Jane reached the peak of her popularity. Jane's main distinguishing feature was her remarkable ability to keep losing her clothes. This usually happened at the most inopportune moments and no Jane  comic strip was complete without some kind of revealing wardrobe malfunction. But the shedding of her clothes was almost always accidental, meaning that Jane could just about maintain a sense of innocence among the comic strip's sauciness. Glynis Barber as Jane This added to her appeal for a generation of soldiers far from home as a perfect "English rose", combining charm, innocence, a plucky spirit of adventure and so

The 1960s was an era not only of classic TV series, but also of classic TV theme tunes. No TV show of the era was complete without a catchy theme tune and, preferably, a memorable credits sequence too. The decade saw the western series dominant in the US and the historical adventures previously popular in the UK give way to other genres, including sci-fi and, especially, secret agent series.  Here are 10 of the best TV themes of the era, from both sides of the Atlantic. These videos are all hosted on Youtube and videos are always being removed from there. So let me know if any of these are removed or if they aren't available in your country.

National Heroes: British Cinema in the Seventies and Eighties  - also published as  National Heroes: The British Film Industry in the Seventies and Eighties -  is the second book in Alexander Walker's trilogy exploring British cinema from the 1960s to the turn of the millennium. The first book, Hollywood England , looked at the 1960s and the very beginning of the 1970s. National Heroes overlaps with that book a little, beginning in 1971 and ending in 1984.

This second big screen outing for the maverick cops of London's Flying Squad sees Detective Inspector Jack Regan (John Thaw) and his sidekick Sergeant George Carter (Dennis Waterman) investigate a series of armed robberies by a ruthless gang of professional criminals.