John Schlesinger cast Tom Courtney in what would become a defining performance as the day-dreaming disillusioned Yorkshire undertaker’s clerk Billy Fisher. To escape the mundanities of working life, Billy creates the fictionalised world Ambrosia where he is the hero and can escape the emotional complications of his two fiancés!

Whilst the British New Wave films of the late 50s and early 60s celebrated Northern life, Billy Liar - made in 1963 - is very much aware of the imminent arrival of the swinging sixties embodied here by a luminous Julie Christie who plays Billy’s former girlfriend Liz. Her entrance in the film is one of the many high points of this heartbreakingly hilarious classic shown here newly restored to mark John Schlesinger’s centenary.

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