behind the scenes

And while the remoteness of rural life meant few nights at the movies, it didn't curb Dr McFarlane's growing appetite for the cinema, particularly the classics that were coming out of British production houses at the time.

"I used to fight battles with my family to get taken to the movies. And on the rare occasions when we did see them, they were mostly American. But the first few British films that I saw lived on in my mind forever," says Dr McFarlane, who is now an author and teacher of film and literature at Monash University and a world authority on British cinema.

"One of my earliest memories, for instance, is of British actress Rosamund John, who, in a dramatic scene, was nursing her injured husband in the garden. I was quite struck by it."

Later, Dr McFarlane sought out the actress for an interview, along with another 100 British on and off-screen legends who appear in his current book, An Autobiography of British Cinema.

Launched recently at London's Museum of the Moving Image and at the Australian Film Institute, the book features the who's who of British cinema over the past 60 years, including directors, actors, writers and music directors.

Dr McFarlane describes the book as a "mosaic history of British cinema told by 135 of the people who made it happen", including stars like Sir Dirk Bogard and Glenda Jackson and director Mike Leigh.

An Autobiography of British Cinema, published by Random House (rrp $39.95), expands upon Dr McFarlane's first book, Sixty Voices.