Terence Davies Screenplays, Volume II

Terence Davies (1945–2022) was born in Liverpool into a large working-class Catholic family. Inspired by his love for cinema, he began writing short stories from the age of 16 and took up acting while working for over a decade as an accounts clerk. His trilogy – Children (1976), Madonna and Child (1980) and Death and Transfiguration (1983) – established his distinctive voice as a filmmaker. Profoundly influenced by T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, he developed a lyrical, meditative style shaped by the nature of memory, time and longing. He went on to make nine feature films, including Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), winner of the International Critics’ Prize at Cannes, The Long Day Closes (1992), The House of Mirth (2000), Of Time and the City (2008) and Benediction (2021). His novel, Hallelujah Now, was first published in 1984.
James Dowling is the co-representative of the Terence Davies Estate and was a close friend of Terence during the last years of his life. He began working with Davies on his later film projects (including the script for Firefly) and editing collections of his poetry. James has continued to honour Davies’s legacy through film, making two short films based on Terence’s poetry: Passing Time (2023), commissioned by Film Fest Gent, and Home! Home! (2024), commissioned by the Centre Pompidou, Paris, as part of a major retrospective.
Lillian Crawford is a writer and curator. She is currently researching a PhD on Screen Two at Royal Holloway, University of London in collaboration with the BBC. Her first book, The Mind of the Doctor: Across the Neurodiverse Universe of Doctor Who, is published by Herne Books in 2026.
Mark Cousins is a film director, producer and writer best known for his 15-hour documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011). Mark has worked on numerous cine-essays, including A Story of Children and Film and I Am Belfast, in which the city is personified by a 10,000-year-old woman. Mark is also a presenter and critic, known for his work on Scene by Scene and Elsewhere.