Life changes dramatically for radio amateur Norman when he gets in touch with a round-the-world yachtsman who introduces him to a different life - and a taste of fame.

When their friend Nicholas is killed in 1960, several women think back to the time when they knew him, in 1945 "when all the best people were poor".

Russell's composer biopics were usually labours of love. This was the opposite: he regarded Strauss's music as "bombastic, sham and hollow", and despised the composer for claiming to be apolitical while cosying up to the Nazi regime. The film depicts Strauss in a variety of grotesquely caricatured situations: attacked by nuns after adopting Nietzsche's philosophy, he fights duels with jealous husbands, literally batters his critics into submission with his music and glorifies the women in his life and fantasies. (BFI Screenonline)