On his face are the bristly beginnings of frost-white facial hair. Rising from an armchair, Davies is wearing a light blue shirt, blue jeans, grey socks and slippers. He is 76 now but has given the impression of being old since the day he was born.

It is likely that he popped out of the womb that way, and that his first words took the form of rhapsodies about Bruckner or the Shipping Forecast. Davies’ burly manager, John, shows me in, but the first glimpse I get of the man himself is in oils on the living room wall: a large portrait, painted by a neighbour, shows the bespectacled director of Distant Voices, Still Lives looking ivory-haired, pink-faced and pensive.

T he door of Terence Davies’s 18th-century cottage is ajar when I arrive, the afternoon sun spilling into the hallway from the village green.