In capturing the reality of poverty and deprivation in communities where the misery of unemployment had been allowed to settle by Westminster, Murtha showed her subjects’ humour, optimism and refusal to be cowed – particularly in the faces of children.

The film is presented with enormous humanity and warmth by Murtha’s grownup daughter Ella, who is an eerie likeness of her late mother.

The centrally important point is that Murtha was not an outsider: she was a part of the people whose lives she recorded.