PETER JACKSON

THE MAN TRULY IN THE KNOW
On a wintry Sunday evening late last summer, a bedraggled figure put his hood up and head down in isolated defiance of the horizontal rain and chill wind. The scene could have passed for something straight out of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, the classic early Sixties film based on Alan Sillitoe’s screenplay of his novel about a Borstal boy finding redemption in the power of endurance.
Unlike the movie starring Tom Courtenay, the action took place not on a level playing field but on a steep gradient across a bridge over the M4 in...