Ken Russell

Although a comparatively late starter when it came to film (he’d trained as a dancer and worked as a successful photographer before turning to amateur filmmaking on the cusp of his thirties), Ken Russell more than made up for lost time, with a massive, sprawling 50-year film and television output.

If there’s one thing that unites practically his entire oeuvre, it’s a decidedly un-British flamboyance, a fearless willingness to thrust often real-life subjects into a wildly fantastical mélange of illusion and invention. Critics and audiences alike alternated between being spellbound and appalled.

Michael Brooke