Maxwell imported top filmmakers from Europe as well as signing up leading British talent such as Alfred Hitchcock.

While it continued to make some more expensive films, it increasingly relied on large numbers of medium or low-budget comedies and musicals aimed at the British rather than the international market.

Maxwell bought a stake in Gaumont, intending this as a first step to a takeover that would allow him to merge the two companies to create a giant firm.

[2] His characteristics are talking with his hand over his mouth, never getting to the office until mid-day, spending two hours over lunch (which means that he has learned the secret of success - the delegation of authority), an affection for big rooms, gaspers, and a quarter bottle of champagne at eleven o'clock every morning with a dry biscuit.

He is a Scot who does not play golf, likes precision, regards card-playing as the evidence of an idle mind, and a trudge round Paris with a guide-book as the perfect holiday.