North by northwest

Hitchcock's best-loved romantic thriller is one of the most influential works ever made in the genre - an enticing cocktail of suspense, comedy, eroticism and danger. Roger Thornhill is a suave but stiff-necked Madison Avenue executive, who finds himself mistaken for a US intelligence agent, and dragged into life-threatening escapades.

His consolation is that he gets to romance an elegant female spy, but he soon learns that the game of international intrigue is played for high stakes.

Ernest Lehman provides an introduction to this souvenir volume, published to coincide with the centenary of Hitchcock's birth, in which he describes the course of his cherishable collaboration with the master of suspense.