Piers Haggard

Piers Inigo Haggard (born 18 March 1939) is a British film and television director, although he has worked mostly in the latter medium.

Haggard was born in London. He is the great-great-nephew of H. Rider Haggard, and is the son of the actor Stephen Haggard and father of the actress Daisy Haggard.

Haggard began his career directing plays for the anthology drama series Thirty-Minute Theatre in the 1960s, later working on the more prestigious anthology shows Armchair Theatre (for ITV) and Play for Today (for the BBC). He directed for a variety of programmes throughout the 1970s, such as The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and Love for Lydia. In 1971, he directed the feature film Satan's Skin, also known as Blood on Satan's Claw. He also directed the horror film Venom.

Probably his best known work came later in the decade. In 1978 he was the director of Dennis Potter's landmark drama serial Pennies From Heaven for the BBC, and the following year he directed the expensive science-fiction serial Quatermass, a Euston Films production for Thames Television, shown on the ITV network. Both of these productions are available on DVD, and the Pennies From Heaven release includes an audio commentary from Haggard.

In 1983, Haggard became one of the founder members of the Director's Guild of Great Britain, which was formed at a meeting of various film and television directors at Ronnie Scott's Club in London.

More recent work has included the Gerry Anderson science-fiction series Space Precinct (1994), the Canadian film Conquest (1998) and various one-off TV dramas such as Cold Enough For Snow (1997) and The Hunt (2001). He directed Academy Award winners, Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell in the 2006 mini-series, The Shell Seekers.