1st 2025 360pp Ten Acre Books trade paperback. Illustrated. Fine.
 
Penda’s Fen, a film for television by David Rudkin, tells the story of a boy obsessed with the music of Elgar. Through a series of visitations – angels and demons, Christ, King Penda, even Elgar himself – emerge the ancient secrets of the Malvern Hills. Director Alan Clarke achieves a masterful balance of the fantastical and the literal that has connected deeply with generations of viewers for over fifty years. 

Scene by Scene is a deep dive into how this masterpiece came to be, drawing upon every surviving draft of the script, a wealth of production papers, revealing correspondence, evocative on-location photography from the summer of 1973, and extensive interviews with cast and crew. This is the definitive account of how the film was written and made.