Ken Loach: five career highs

In the mid-1960s, Loach made a run of one-off dramas for the BBC. The most famous, ‘Cathy Come Home’, is one of the most influential pieces of TV ever made. The story of a single mum who loses her home and her kids, it threw a spotlight on homelessness in Loach’s pioneering style: real, raw and compassionate. The outrage it generated inspired the founding of homelessness charity Shelter.

In 1969 Loach made one of the best-loved British films. ‘Kes’, set in South Yorkshire, was his second feature for cinema. It tells the story of 15-year-old Billy, a troubled young boy, trodden on at home and ignored at school, whose life changes when he forms a bond with his pet kestrel.

Almost forgotten now, one of Loach’s towering achievements is the four-part mid-’70s historical drama series ‘Days of Hope’. It follows the lives of a northern working-class family from 1916 to 1926, controversially showing the brutal treatment of conscientious objectors during WWI. You can find it on YouTube.

Eyebrows were raised in 2009 when Loach announced he was making a film with the ex Man Utd player. The result was a brilliant social comedy about a depressed Manchester postman to whom Cantona suddenly appears as a guardian angel. It’s funny, moving and every inch a Loach film.

Loach first won the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize in 2006, for his Irish War of Independence drama ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley’. He scooped it again this month for his latest film, ‘I, Daniel Blake’. Not bad for a man who announced his ‘retirement’ in 2014. The film is an upsetting drama about two people in Newcastle feeling the sharp end of the benefits system – and likely to provoke the same sort of debate as ‘Cathy Come Home’ did 50 years ago. Go, Ken!