Book review: the rise and fall of the UK Film Council by Gillian Doyle, Philip Schlesinger, Raymond Boyle and Lisa W. Kelly

In The Rise and Fall of the UK Film Council, Gillian Doyle, Philip Schlesinger, Raymond Boyle and Lisa W. Kelly explore the shifting importance given to film policy in Britain by focusing on the establishment of the UK Film Council under the Labour government that came to power in 1997. This organisational study gives a cogent and lucid account of the Film Council’s aims and achievements, as well as the challenges it faced, before its eventual abolition in 2011. However, the political and economic focus leaves both audience reception and the Council’s influence on cinema as an art form largely unexplored, writes Geoffrey Nowell-Smith.