What can historical films and period television tell us about history? How reliable are these sources? How, as historians, should we 'read' a film? This second edition of Histories on Screen gets to the heart of these questions and more in a comprehensive volume which greatly enhances our understanding of the relationship between film/television and history.
The book begins with a theoretical 'Thinking about Film' section that explores the ways in which film and television can be analyzed and interrogated as either primary sources, secondary sources or indeed as both. The much larger 'Using Film' segment of the book then provides diverse case studies which put this theory into practice. It explores vital areas of historical analysis in the process, including gender, class, race, war, genocide, sexuality, propaganda, national identity and memory. Documentaries, films and television from Britain and the United States are examined and there is a jargon-free emphasis on the skills and methods needed to analyze films in historical study that features prominently throughout the text.
This new edition includes six brand new chapters exploring the following key topics:
* Depictions of women in period dramas
* Black British history on film
* LGBTQ+ history and documentary film production
* The Holocaust, film and post-genocidal trauma
* US Civil Rights and television
* The Hollywood Western and the Cold War

Sam Edwards is Reader in Modern Political History at Loughborough University, UK. He is the author of Allies in Memory: World War II and the Politics of Transatlantic Commemoration, c. 1941-2001 (2015) and the co-editor, along with Michael Dolski and John Buckley, of D-Day in History and Memory: The Normandy Landings in International Remembrance and Commemoration (2014).

Michael Dolski is a historian with the Joint Prisoner of War-Missing in Action Accounting Command's Central Identification Laboratory in the USA. Together with Sam Edwards and John Buckley, he is editor of D-Day in History and Memory: The Normandy Landings in International Remembrance and Commemoration (2014).

Faye Sayer is Assistant Professor in Heritage and History at University of Birmingham, UK. She has published major articles on community heritage and worked for some of the UK's most significant heritage organizations, including English Heritage, The Portable Antiquities Scheme and the Museum of London. She has been involved in public heritage projects around the world, including in the USA, Europe, and Australia, and she is also a well-known, former Time Team archaeologist.