Assesses how cinematic biographies of key figures reflect and shape what it means to be British. Winner of the 2019 SAMLA Studies Book Award for Edited Collections presented by the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Rule, Britannia! surveys the British biopic, a genre crucial to understanding how national cinema engages with the collective experience and values of its intended audience. Offering a provocative take on an aspect of filmmaking with profound cultural significance, the volume focuses on how screen biographies of prominent figures in British history and culture can be understood as involved, if unofficially, in the shaping and promotion of an ever-protean national identity. The contributors engage with the vexed concept of British nationality, especially as this sense of collective belonging is problematized by the ethnically oriented alternatives of English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish nations. They explore the critical and historiographical issues raised by the biopic, demonstrating that celebration of conventional virtue is not the genre's only natural subject. Filmic depictions of such personalities as Elizabeth I, Victoria, George VI, Elizabeth II, Margaret Thatcher, Iris Murdoch, and Jack the Ripper are covered.

Table of Contents:
Illustrations Preface R. Barton Palmer and Homer B. Pettey Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: The Kray Twins and Biographical Media Homer B. Pettey Part I. Royalty and Politicians 2. The Biopic, the Nation, and Counter-History in the Films of Derek Jarman Marcia Landy 3. Elizabeth I and the Life of Visual Culture Homer B. Pettey 4. Gender and Authority in the Queen Victoria Films Jeffrey Richards 5. The Re-Centering of the Monarch in the Royal Biopic: The Queen and The King’s Speech Giselle Bastin 6. The Iron Lady: Politics and/in Performance Linda Ruth Williams Part II. Artistic Biography 7. Casting the British Biopic: The Barretts of Wimpole Street 1934–1957 Deborah Cartmell 8. The Muse’s Tale: Rewriting the English Author in The Invisible Woman Hila Shachar 9. A Matter of Life and Art: Artist Biopics in Post-Thatcher Britain Jim Leach 10. Closer and Closer Apart: Questioning Identities in Richard Eyre’s Iris Mark Luprecht Part III. Crimes and Warfare 11. Carving the National Body: Jack the Ripper Dominic Lennard 12. Leslie Howard’s The First of the Few (1942): The Patriotic Biopic as Star Vehicle R. Barton Palmer 13. Who the Man Who Never Was, Was Murray Pomerance 14. Secrecy and Exposure: The Cambridge Spies Erica Sheen Bibliography Selected Film, Television, Recordings, and Radio Contributors Index