Following the much discussed success of independent film companies at the recent Oscars ceremony, film wannabees would do well to study this sobering account of how Palace Pictures took the British film scene by storm and then sank in a mire of debts and disgraces - despite a credits list which includes The Company Of Wolves, The Crying Game, A Letter To Brezhnev and Mona Lisa. Finney sprinkles his financial facts with generous quantities of F words in the shape of insider anecdotes and vivid penportraits of some of the smaller players in what might with reasonable accuracy be termed "the lying game".
