Hitchcock carefully controlled his public persona, emphasizing his lugubrious humour and often retelling selected anecdotes from his childhood to explain his mastery of the cinematic thriller. Delving behind these stories Ackroyd investigates what the director also owed to his formative experiences in British and German film-making and how the fears, fantasies and obsessions of his lonely upbringing in East London shaped his lifelong controlling personality and his films’ characteristic mixture of comedy and suspense. American-cut pages. Off-mint and felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.