Book description
Alan Bates, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Tom Courtenay, Albert
Finney, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, Robert Shaw and Terence Stamp:
They are the most formidable acting generation ever to tread the
boards or stare into a camera, whose anti-establishment attitude
changed the cultural landscape of Britain.
This was a new breed, many culled from the working class industrial
towns of Britain, and nothing like them has been seen before or since.
Their raw earthy brilliance brought realism to a whole range of
groundbreaking theatre from John Osborne's Look Back in Anger
to Joan Littlewood and Harold Pinter and the creation of the National
Theatre. And they ripped apart the staid, middle-class British film
industry with kitchen-sink classics like Saturday Night and Sunday
Morning, This Sporting Life, The Loneliness of the Long
Distance Runner, A Kind of Loving and Billy Liar before
turning their sights on international stardom: Connery with James
Bond, O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, Finney with Tom Jones and Caine
in Zulu.
Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down brings alive the
trail-blazing period of theatre and film from 1956-1964 through the
vibrant energy and exploits of this revolutionary generation of stars
who bulldozed over austerity Britain and paved the way for the
swinging 60s. What Peter Biskind's Easy Riders Raging Bulls did
for American cinema writing so Don't Let the Bastards will do
for the British cinema.
Robert Sellers is the author of the bestselling
Hellraisers: The
Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter
O'Toole and Oliver Reed
,
Hollywood Hellraisers
and
An A-Z of Hellraisers
. He has also written biographies on Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford and Sean
Connery,
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
, a history of the George Harrison/Monty Python film company HandMade,
and the controversial
Battle for Bond
, which for a time was banned by the family of Ian Fleming
.
He was a regular contributor to
Empire, Total Film
,
Independent, SFX
and
Cinema Retro
and
has contributed to a number of television documentaries, including
Channel 4's
The 100 Best Family Films
.
