I knew Terence Davies in a friendly professional way for four decades, having written a glowing review of the completed Terence Davies Trilogy. He told an audience at a retrospective that this was was the first published praise that he sent to his adored mother, adding the words “Told you so”.
How he travelled from frightened seven-year-old during the following 30 years to create such a debut probably remains a mystery even to those who knew him intimately. A traumatised childhood, leaving school early, years of clerical work and a stint as an unsuccessful actor yielded someone whose work dominated his life and who created movie masterpieces, a fine documentary, a novel and a play for BBC Radio 3.
