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.
Complex, intractable, charming and amusing, he could be intense and sometimes peevish. He was demanding of his devoted crew but more so of himself. It is no surprise that he was so admiring of Emily Dickinson.
As Ryan Gilbey notes, Pete Postlethwaite asked if his father had been the monster he was creating, and Terence said he was. Later he told me that once his mother had fled to an upstairs room and jumped from a window, landing in the arms of a passing soldier. He would never include this, fearful of viewers finding it amusing. Black comedy was not his style. Black yes. Comedy no.