Ken Loach

Born 17 June 1936, Kenneth Charles Loach became the rare British filmmaker whose socialism wasn't subtext but structure. Cathy Come Home in 1966 made homelessness impossible to look away from; Poor Cow the next year kept the lens on poverty. Kes in 1969 — later voted the seventh greatest British film of the century — proved you could make poetry from a kid and a kestrel in a failing northern town. He kept going: labour rights in Riff-Raff in 1991 and The Navigators in 2001, then the Palme d'Or for The Wind That Shakes the Barley in 2006 and again for I, Daniel Blake a decade later, joining onl…