29 May at 7pm
Discussing his life and work

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Loach is Britain's greatest director of radical drama. He learned his trade in TV in the 1960s, working on the police series Z Cars. In 1967, his drama documentary Cathy Come Home, an exposé of poverty and homelessness, shocked people across Britain and led to new laws and the founding of the charity Shelter.

Since then, his films have probed many social issues, always concentrating on individual stories and exploring people's dilemmas and choices. In the 1980s he took issue with Thatcherism and free market economics, and often clashed with the authorities. He has continued to make hard-hitting films for cinema and television, including Hidden Agenda, about Northern Ireland, Raining Stones, about poverty in 1990s Britain, Land and Freedom, about the Spanish Civil War, and Carla's Song, set in Nicaragua in the '80s.

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Ken Loach © PA Photos