In the 1940s, the popular films of Gainsborough
Studios like The Wicked Lady and The Man in Grey were reviled by Fleet Street reviewers and cinephiles alike. Jeffrey Richards , the film critic and Senior Lecturer in History at Lancaster
University, argues that Gainsborough's costume melodramas should be taken at least as seriously as the genteel product of Ealing Studios both for their quality and for the light they throw on the Britain of the War years.