The Living Dead: Three Films About the Power of the Past is the second major BBC television documentary series by British filmmaker Adam Curtis.
The work of Ewen Cameron is surveyed, with particular reference to the early medical use of electroconvulsive therapy, Cold War theories of communist brainwashing, and the search for hypnoprogammed sleeper agents and assassins.
Curtis argues that by harking back, or summoning the spirit of Britain's "glorious past", to fulfil short-term political or national ends, the process backfired in the long-run, trapping the invoker in the societal maladies of the present day.
The example provided is the wartime levels of patriotism invoked in the Falklands War crisis, in which Thatcher's rugged determination matched national sentiment, only to dissipate a few years later with events such as the poll tax riots, which contributed to her resignation.
The title is a reference to the attic flat at the top of 10 Downing Street created during Thatcher's refurbishment of the house which did away with the prime minister's old living quarters on the lower floors, replacing them with 18th-century boardrooms.