With neither the heavyweight art house cred of Greenaway or Davies, nor the commercial clout of a Notting Hill or Lock, Stock behind him, there is a case to be made for Alex Cox as the most neglected of contemporary British film-makers. Always too wayward to be artistically embraced, and yet too rarefied for the box office (Highway Patrolman has subtitles), he's rather fallen between two stools. A cult, if you will. It's a case, though, that Steven Paul Davies isn't well placed to make.

Davies' prose is thin, fanzine stuff: "Nobody is innocent in Death and the Compass and everybody is guilty of something." As befits a former newsreader, he assembles the facts - tracing Cox from birth in Liverpool 1954, through the good times (Repo Man, Sid & Nancy), and the bad (Straight To Hell) - competently but with nary an opinion to call of his own. He is critical only when Cox is critical (The Winner), his attempts at analysis are embarrassing, and the remainder is little more than hagiography.

All of which, fortunately, only goes to hobble the book rather cripple it. Davies has secured Cox's full co-operation and is therefore able to build on extensive interviews both with the director and his many collaborators. Criticism sometimes enters through the backdoor. "There were times when he pushed them further than they wanted to be pushed," says producer Eric Fellner. "Sometimes that created brilliance and other times it created resentment. He's smart and a very forceful character, but sometimes I think he dazzles himself and...loses his vision." The copious black and white illustrations are superb.

Davies, we're told, will co-ordinate publicity for Cox's next film.