New Heritage of Horror

The first and most quoted book on the British horror movie, David Pirie's acclaimed A Heritage of Horror has long been regarded as a trail-blazing classic, "having the force of a revelation", according to one recent study of the subject, "inspirational" in another. It was the first book to detect and analyze the roots of British horror, identifying it as "the only staple cinematic myth which Britain can properly claim as its own", and was consequently heralded by film-makers like Michael Powell and Martin Scorsese. But though it inspired a revaluation of the form, Heritage has been unavailable for so long that copies have changed hands at very high prices. Now at last, David Pirie updates and revises his original work in The New Heritage of Horror, bringing the story right into the new century, examining all that has happened since (including the latest horror boom inaugurated by films like The Others) and uncovering fresh documentation from the original files to add more revelations about the history of UK horror and Hammer Films, not least the largely untold story of their desperate battles against censorship. The New Heritage of Horror promises to be one of the key film books of 2007.