Ken Russell's New Forest Home Destroyed by Blaze

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.”