The greatest Western movie posters of all time (WARNING: scenes of violence and lashings of testosterone right from the start)

(...and sexual and racial stereotypes. There are very few women in it. Or black actors. This may upset some readers. My heart bleeds.)

Ty Hardin died earlier this month, aged 87. If you're below the age of 60, or if you didn't waste your childhood watching television, you might not be familiar with the name. If you're anything like me, you'll instantly recall him as Bronco Lane in the TV series, Bronco, which ran from 1958 to 1962. One of the first things my parents did after arriving in London in the late '50s was to rent a television set from Rediffusion (television hadn't been introduced in Norway by that time). For the next five years, I feasted on a western diet - Cheyenne, Maverick, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Wells Fargo,  The Rifleman, Bonanza, Rawhide, Wyatt Earp, The Lone Ranger, Laramie, Have Gun Will Travel, Davy Crockett... there was even a British-made series, Four Feather Falls, featuring puppets...

If there wasn't a TV western, the BBC or ITV would show an old Hollywood western to ensure we got our daily fix. How they managed to fit that lot in when there were only two channels, both of which didn't broadcast anything entertaining until the evenings on weekdays, and which shut down at midnight, is a a mystery.

Eventually, the stampede of horse operas put people off paying to watch cowboy movies at the cinema. Sergio Leone revived the genre by injecting lashings of violence, amorality and dodgy dubbing in the mid-'60s, and his star, Clint Eastwood, helped keep the western alive for the next two decades by refining the Leone formula, while the rest of Hollywood pitched in occasionally with notable films such as The Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, True Grit and The Shootist - but most 1970s big budget westerns were laments for the passing of the Old West, and, in a way, for the passing of the genre itself, and of the traditional virtues - honour, courage, steadfastness, loyalty - which it once celebrated. At least half of the TCM channel's output seems to consist of black and white "oaters", but - I'm ashamed to admit - I rarely watch them. I'm not sure why: perhaps because, as with horror films, I once ODed on them.

Whatever the reason for my lack of interest in the films themselves these days, I derive an enormous amount of pleasure from the posters. This selection isn't based on the quality of the films - just on the power of the artwork to evoke what made us fall in love with westerns in the first place.

Yes, Straw Dogs was set in Cornwall in the '70s - but it was essentially a Sam Peckinpah western:

Here are three posters featuring the Big Feller:

Here's Clint, preparing to welcome guests in the traditional manner:

Here, in a poster reflecting French priorities, Clint enjoys a beverage after taking care of his visitors:

Bottoms Up! I'll leave you with this magnificently atmospheric poster for 1980's The Long Riders :