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the story of Hollywood on the Tiber
Rome in the 1950s: following the recovery from fascism and Nazi occupation during the Second World War, the city is reinvigorated. The street cafes and nightclubs are filled with movie stars and film directors as Hollywood productions flock to the city to film at Cinecitta Studios. Fiats and Vespas throng the streets, and the newly…
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A talk on Hitchcock’s Heroines
I recently delivered a talk based on my book Hitchcock’s Heroines to one of the largest lecture societies in the UK, the Eastbourne Ashridge Circle. At the city’s impressive Congress Theatre, I took the audience of 1,000 guests on a journey from the twenties to the seventies, exploring the women, and their style, in Alfred…
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Hitchcock’s British Heroines
We all know about the glacial elegance of Hitchcock blondes like Grace Kelly, Tippi Hedren and Kim Novak, but the heroines from Hitchcock’s early British films are much less well known. So let’s explore some of these actresses, and why they are the starting point when studying the women in Hitchcock films and his impeccable…
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A visit to Chanel’s rosehall House
Rosehall, the Highland estate where Coco Chanel lived with her lover, the ultra-wealthy Duke of Westminster, in the late 1920s, is a gem of a place. Rosehall has recently been sold to a buyer after many years of neglect, with plans to convert the place into a boutique hotel. This is great news, as it…
