Our authors

Mark Browning

After receiving a First Class English degree at Manchester University, Mark Browning attended universities in Leeds, London and Kent and gained a PGCE, an MA and a PhD respectively. He has taught English and Film Studies in a number of schools in England and was a senior lecturer in Education at Bath Spa University. His previous books include David Cronenberg: Author or Filmmaker? and Stephen King on the Big Screen (both for Intellect), and David Fincher: Movies that Scar (for ABC CLIO).

He now lives and works as a teacher and freelance writer in Germany. His book, Danny Boyle: Lust For Life, was published by Chaplin Books in 2011.

John Bull

John Bull was born in 1935. He grew up in Gosport, Hampshire, and trained as a reporter on the Portsmouth Evening News. His subsequent provincial newspaper career included stints for the South London Press, where Battersea was his 'beat' area; the Bath Chronicle; and the Southern Evening Echo in Southampton. He worked in Paris, for the Associated French Press, before moving to Fleet Street where he wrote the John Field column for the News of the World (with a weekly readership of more than 12 million), and worked as a sub-editor on the Daily Mirror. His skills as a newspaper 'doctor', turning around failing papers and putting them back on the road to success, have been called on many times, most notably when he became editor of Sunday Sport in the 1980s.

His memoirs, The Night They Blitzed The Ritz and The Smile on the Face of the Pig are both published by Chaplin Books.

Bert Cardullo

Bert Cardullo is Professor of Media and Communication at the Izmir University of Economics in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in film history, theory, and criticism as well as popular culture. The author of many essays and articles over the years, he has had his work appear in such journals as the Yale Review, Cambridge Quarterly, Film Quarterly, Cinema Journal, New Theatre Quarterly, and Modern Drama. For 20 years, from 1987 to 2007, he was the regular film critic for the Hudson Review in New York. Cardullo is the author, editor, or translator of a number of books, the most notable of which are Soundings on Cinema: Speaking to Film and Film Artists, Theater of the Avant-Garde, 1890-1950: A Critical Anthology, and In Search of Cinema: Writings on International Film Art. He took his master's and doctoral degrees from Yale University, and received his BA, with honours, from the University of Florida.

Bert Cardullo's Interviews with Eric Rohmer will be published by Chaplin Books in 2012.

James Christie

James Christie, born in 1964, has a degree in creative writing and a postgraduate diploma in library and information studies. He catalogued the private library of a stately home and worked as a law librarian for some years in Glasgow. In 2002 he was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome and shortly thereafter began to take a focused interest in Drusilla the vampire, a character in the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He wrote a trilogy of fan-fiction stories (Drusilla's Roses, Drusilla's Redemption and Drusilla Revenant) which further developed the character of Drusilla.

In 2010, James took a Buffy-themed Greyhound bus trip across America with the support of the National Autistic Society Scotland, the story of which, together with descriptions of his difficulties living as an autistic adult in a neuro-typical world, will be published by Chaplin Books under the title Dear Miss Landau in 2012.

Amanda J Field

Amanda Field, author of England’s Secret Weapon, is a film historian who specialises in the classic 'studio era' of Hollywood. She studied art history at Winchester School of Art and took her Masters in Film Studies at the University of Southampton, where she completed her doctorate in 2009. Before embarking on academic study, she had a long career in corporate communications producing publications for blue-chip organisations including IBM, Vodafone, The Science Museum and British Gas. She is a member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and for five years was a volunteer at at Portsmouth Museum where she helped catalogue the world's largest collection of Sherlock Holmes material.

She is currently researching boxing films of the 1930s, 40s and 50s for Chaplin Books, and these will be published as three separate books: Golden Gloves, Sucker Punch, and On The Ropes, in 2012.

Jacqueline Percival

Since the 1970s Jacqueline has been collecting books on housekeeping, thrifty cookery, etiquette and servants, as well as women's magazines, and these now form a comprehensive collection of primary sources dating from the 1850s to the 1960s. She drew on this collection to write her first book, Breadcrumbs and Banana Skins: The Birth of Thrift, published in 2010, and Elbow Grease, a light-hearted look at how our grandmothers and great-grandmothers kept house, which was published by Chaplin Books in 2011. Jacqueline also runs a thriving internet-based book-selling business, Silverhands Books.

Derek Phillips

Derek Phillips, the compiler of The Wonder of Woolies, is a retired civil servant who worked in electrical engineering and aircraft logistics attached to the Royal Navy. He is the author of 10 books on steam railways, an enthusiasm that began when as a teenager he became a locomotive fireman at Yeovil Town engine shed.

Françoise Schiltz

Dr Françoise Schiltz, author of The Future Revisited: Jules Verne on Screen in 1950s America is originally from Luxembourg and now lives in London. She studied English Literature at the University of Kent and went on to do a PhD in film studies at the University of Southampton.