Penda's Fen: Scene by Scene by Ian Greaves
Publisher: Ten Acre Books
Year: 2025
Format: Softcover
Edition: First
Condition: New
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.
