CREDITS BILLY LIAR, 1963 dir: John Schlesinger Tom Courtenay Julie Christie Wilfred Pickles Mona Washbourne Ethel Griffies Leonard Rossiter Finlay Currie

“It was a big day for us. We had won the war in Ambrosia. Democracy was back once more in our beloved country.”

The New Wave of the sixties shifted the focus of British cinema from the middle class Home Counties to working class inner cities up North.

One of the first, 1959's Room at the Top, was filmed around Bradford, Yorkshire, but still relied on actors schooled in Received Pronunciation faking flat Northern vowels.

Four years later, when John Schlesinger filmed this adaptation of Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall’s play in the same Yorkshire town, the former documentary maker was bold enough to cast Northerners.

Schlesinger incorporated fantasy sequences and broad satire into the story of Billy Fisher (Tom Courtenay), an undertaker’s clerk who lives a rich fantasy life but ultimately blows his chance of real escape with swinging free spirit Liz (the iconic Julie Christie).

Billy Liar location: Billy and his mate clown about on the War Memorial, Bradford

Filmed mainly around Bradford in Yorkshire, where Billy clowns about on the city’s war memorial on Prince’s Way (shockingly disrespectful, less than twenty years after the end of WWII). If you're visiting Bradford, don't forget to visit the National Media Museum, with its IMAX cinema, which you'll find in the city centre.

Billy Liar location: 'Shadrack and Duxbury' – the unndertaker where Billy worked: Southgate, Bradford

The shop which served as ‘Shadrack and Duxbury’, the undertakers where Billy works, can be found nearby, at the foot of the steps on Southgate, off Sunbridge Road.

The pompous Victorian cemetery in which Billy walks, with one of his two fiancées, can be found northeast of the city centre. The grimy monuments of Undercliffe Cemetery overlook Bradford, on Undercliffe Lane, off Otley Road.

Billy Liar location: Billy walks with his fiancées: Undercliffe Cemetery, Bradford:

Although Billy appears to walk to the city centre in a couple of minutes, his home is in one of the nicer suburbs, about four miles north of the city centre, at 37 Hinchcliffe Avenue, Baildon, north of Shipley (rail: Baildon).

The dance hall, where Billy’s romantic entanglements catch up with him, was the old Locarno, now gone, which stood on Manningham Lane.

Billy’s review of the victorious troops in the fantasy realm of ‘Ambrosia’ filmed at Leeds Town Hall. Look out for director Schlesinger, in a characteristic Hitchcock-style cameo, as a Russian officer in one of the fantasy sequences.

Billy Liar location: Billy chickens out of leaving for London with Liz: Marylebone Station – London

Even this film is not all the real North, though. The final scene, supposedly set on ‘Central Station, Bradford’, with Liz leaving for the Big City, filmed in the capital itself, ironically, on London’s Marylebone Station.