This volume seeks to analyze biographical films as representations of historical individuals and the times in which they lived. The contributors examine the contexts in which certain biographical films were made, including the state of knowledge about their subjects at that moment, and what these films reveal about the values and purposes of those who created them. This original approach to biographical (as opposed to historical) films has so far played little part in the growing literature on historical films. The volume opens with an analysis of the nature of biographical films as a genre: comparing and contrasting the nature of biography on film with written biographies, and considering their relationship with the discipline of history. The films under discussion date from the 1920s to the 2010s and deal with males and females in periods ranging from the Middle Ages to the end of the twentieth century. Each essay examines how biographical films reflect changing attitudes towards issues such as race, gender and sexuality, as well as the influence of these films on popular perceptions of the past.

Thomas S. Freeman is Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Essex, UK. He is the co-author of Religion and the Book in Early Modern England: the Making of Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs' (2011). He is also the co-editor of The Tudors and Stuarts on Film (2008), and four other volumes on early modern English history. David L. Smith is Fellow, Director of Studies in History, and Graduate Tutor at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, UK. His books include Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c. 1640-1649 (1994), A History of the Modern British Isles, 1603-1707 (1998), The Stuart Parliaments, 1603-1689 (1999), and (with Patrick Little) Parliaments and Politics during the Cromwellian Protectorate (2007).