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There's a pernicious misapprehension afoot that the Brits are the polite ones while Yanks are inclined to brusqueness or brashness, but a comparison of the varied reactions to the deaths of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher would seem to give the lie to this. While "The Great Communicator" was hailed for ending the Cold War (something surely Mr. Gorbachev deserves some credit for), with little mention of his disastrous economic policies and illegal covert wars, Thatcher has received her due as a "divisive" figure, even on the BBC. And, as I write this, there is a genuine chance that "Ding Dong, The Witch is Dead," will reach number one in the UK charts.

Nor were the British uniformly polite about her when she was alive. The Tories gave no encouragement to the art of cinema, or most of the other arts. Invited to talk about her favorite works of art on television,...

There's a foretaste of the Somme and a whole social order being upended in Roy Ward Baker's film

Ah, the many Proustian pleasures to be derived from a renewed acquaintance with Roy Ward Baker's 1958 Titanic melodrama A Night To Remember ... Last seen by me on some wintry Sunday afternoon in the prepubescent early 1970s, probably in the same post-prandial time-slot where I first encountered The Cockleshell Heroes, Carve Her Name With Pride and The Colditz Story – the dull roar of British postwar self-congratulation on film. It has lingered clearly in my head in a way none of those others ever did, and come back fresh as ever.

Certain pleasures derive from familiarity: any waterborne or storm-tossed movie made in Britain in those years fetched up sooner or later in what I've always thought of as "the Ealing tank", although here it's the equally ripple-free Pinewood tank, abetted, pricelessly,...

The BBFC have cleared extras for the DVD release of the Second Doctor story The Dominators.

This 1968 five-part story has been expected ever since an official promo for the story was leaked to YouTube at the end of last year. The story stars Patrick Troughton as the Doctor along with Frazer Hines as Jamie and Wendy Padbury as Zoe.

The story is set on the planet Dulkis, under threat from two alien Dominators, Rago and his subordinate Toba, who have landed in a spaceship. It features the robot Quarks.

Guest stars include Ronald Allen, who was well known at the time for his starring role in the soap opera Compact and later for his role in Crossroads and Brian Cant who was a staple of Children's television in the sixties and seventies, well known for his work on Play School and Play Away and for his narration on the popular Trumpton,...