The updated autobiography of Britain’s most controversial film director, the maker of Women in Love, The Devils, The Music Lovers, Tommy and The Rainbow, is as unconventional and brilliant as his best films. Moving with astonishing assurance through time and space, Russell recreates his life in a series of interconnected episodes – his thirties childhood in Southampton, his first sexual experience (watching Disney’s Pinocchio), his schooldays at the Nautical College, Pangbourne, early careers in the Merchant Marine and the Royal Air Force, dancing days at the Shepherds Bush Ballet Club and of course his career as a film-maker, beginning with an extraordinary interview with Huw Weldon for a job on Monitor. Full of marvellously funny anecdotes and fascinating insights into the realities of the film director's life, A British Picture is a remarkable autobiography.

Fashion designer Joanna Crane leads a double life. By night she is China Blue, a prostitute who's attracted the attention of a sexually frustrated private detective, and a psychopathic priest in possession of a murderous sex toy.

A psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind boy becomes a master pinball player and the object of a religious cult.

Composer, conductor and teacher Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky struggles against his homosexual tendencies by marrying, but unfortunately he chooses a wonky, nymphomaniac girl whom he cannot satisfy.

Documentary shows Ken Russell at work on various BBC TV documentaries, with clips from Diary of a Nobody, The Debussy Film, Always on Sunday, Don't Shoot the Composer, Elgar and behind the scenes directing of Isadora Duncan. He discusses his working methods and filmmaking philosophy and is also shown at home entertaining his daughter Victoria.

An actor is playing Claude Debussy in a film about the composer's life, and finds himself identifying with his subject very closely.