Phillip French reviews a new biography of John Ford, which identifies his early life as part of an Irish American community in New England as having a formative influence in the perspective of his many classic films.

Thus when it came to the conflict between the US cavalry and the Indians in his great postwar Westerns, Ford was on both sides. Moreover, he seemed to regard any persecuted group as honorary Irishmen, whether they were dispossessed Okies heading for California in The Grapes of Wrath, Native Americans returning to their tribal hunting ground in Cheyenne Autumn or Welsh miners drawn together by grief in How Green Was My Valley.