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 More
than 60 firefighters were called out yesterday when the New Forest
cottage belonging to flamboyant film director Ken Russell was destroyed
by fire. Russell's American wife, Elise, escaped from their £400,000
home - which doubles as his film studio - as flames, fanned by the
wind, ripped through the roof.
 Russell,
78, used the thatched cottage at East Boldre, Hampshire, to make low
budget films that he and his wife release on the internet. He was
walking back from the post office in the village when he first heard
fire engines.
“I saw the flames and my thoughts were for my wife,” he said. “As long
as she is OK, what more can you say?” Russell, who had lived in the
thatched cottage for 20 years, said he had feared that a fire would
break out. The director of Women in Love and Tommy
said that he tried desperately to rescue his wife from their burning
home, not realising that she had already escaped, fleeing naked into
the garden.
“I looked upstairs but there were no stairs — it was an inferno of
flames,” he said. “I got a metal ladder from the garage and took it
round to the bedroom window and smashed it. It was full of black,
billowing smoke. I thought if she was in there she would be dead as no
one could survive it. The cottage had to burn down for me to prove my
love — it was probably worth it.”
Russell met his wife five years ago, after she answered an
advertisement he placed on the internet. They married the following
year.
On realising that the cottage was the only casualty, he said: “There
was a naked lady running round the garden — pity I was not there to
film it.”
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