Now he has written a beautifully lush and brooding new score for FW Murnau's silent masterpiece Nosferatu. First seen 75 years ago, it is about to be reborn this Monday at the Royal Festival Hall, when the City of Prague Philharmonic premieres Bernard's new score to accompany a "Channel Four Silents" screening of a new print. If you try to be subtle, it simply doesn't work..." Resplendent in a green jogging suit and wide-collared floral shirt, the dapper, silver-haired speaker leans back on his sofa, sips at a glass of blood-red wine, and gives a little low chuckle. This is James Bernard, an unsung giant among film composers, who wrote the supernatural soundtracks for countless cult-classic Hammer films in the 1950s and 1960s. James Bernard is a survivor of the house of horror films of the Fifties and Sixties; and now, as Steven Poole discovers, he's all set to make your flesh creep again with his new score to Murnau's classic silent vampire movie, `Nosferatu'. The composer-in-residence at the house of horror is back in business.

Writing music to make your flesh creep is his speciality, and he is rumblingly passionate about it: "If Dracula's approaching a victim, and there's a lovely nubile lady in bed, and she's restless, and the window's open, and she's got the maid to come and take all the garlic flowers out of the room - suddenly you cut from her to the window, and there is Christopher Lee as Count Dracula.. You've got to have a great `Oh-Woaaah!' at that moment. `Feel the sun on your face and enjoy the spectacular view.' "`Food for Ravens', BBC2, Sunday 16, 11.15pm.. "While he's doped up on morphine, he lapses into the past and sees himself as a young man with his wife on the farm, and he relives memorable moments from his life. It's very enlightening and the first work I've done in Britain for ages that I'm particularly proud of."He is being wooed for projects, but he says: "I used to be a great one for making plans, but now I don't bother I'm learning how to live in the moment `Just be here, Brian' I tell myself. "He was probably the greatest British parliamentarian of the 20th century," states Cox."He was an amazing man, but he was tough He always took the opposite view of things. He was very tenacious and stubborn, but intuitive too." Food For Ravens, which will be broadcast on BBC2 this Sunday, focuses not on the great political achievements of the Ebbw Vale MP's life, but on the last year, when he's bedridden and dying from cancer "He doesn't know he's dying," says Cox.

It was a wonderfully poignant story about the final years of a remarkable man's life, and when you're drawn to it like I was, the money doesn't matter."Nye Bevan, the charismatic Labour politician and leading light of the socialist movement from the Thirties to the Fifties was, among many other things, responsible for giving birth to the National Health Service. The writer-director, Trevor Griffiths, gave me the script while I was in the West End last year and it was brilliant. It's why great plays like Hamlet and Richard III last, because everyone gets inflamed by it It's got nothing to do with taste It transcends that It's theatre at its best or television at its best In the '60s we had so many great writers It was so vibrant then It had a uniqueness, an energy But now it's become so placid."He shrugs "Nowadays it's all run by suits," he adds brusquely. It's about covering your ass and not rocking the boat."Why then did he return to British soil from working on $60m Hollywood productions to make Food For Ravens, a BBC Wales drama budgeted somewhere near $1.2m? "It was a throwback to the way things were; quality work performed in a quality working environment," he says "It was too good to resist. "At least in America they've given the power back to the writer. It's healthy to see so many writer-producers doing well; it's why American TV leads the world In Britain .. it's all about safety. Populism is taking an idea and making it so potent and passionate that people pick up on it immediately.

When people started making drama programmes, it was an opportunity to bring rich drama to the masses That was one of the great principles of television Today, they cut their cloth accordingly. The drama is on the same level as the game show."I've always been a populist, and I know what populism is," he continues. "And populism isn't patronising, which is how it is practiced on British TV. I realised there and then that I couldn't do the work I wanted to do in Britain."Even today, as Cox and I bask in the afternoon sunshine, the BBC's lack of faith in the series still riles him. As he talks, it is clear that a great deal of anger lurks beneath his immense charm.

"One of the big disappointments back home is television," he says. "It used to be the benchmark for the rest of the world, but now it's terrible It's all populism for populism sake. I thought I'd found the material when I did a pilot for the BBC in 1993 called The Negotiator. It had great potential, but it was also very dark and so they axed it, even though it attracted 10 million viewers. "I came here because there's an opportunity to earn a living, which there isn't at home A lot of actors do one or two jobs a year They can't live off that. I think it's a profession."What I wanted to do was a television series. Since he moved back to California in 1995 he has appeared in six features, including Braveheart, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Chain Reaction and The Glimmer Man."Most actors of my generation in Britain do not work enough," he says.