What would life be without influences? We are excited by and responsible to them as long as we live. All wisdom is plagiarism; only stupidity is original, said an interesting theologian named Hugh Thomson Kerr. I have been a very original man, I admit, but luckily, there have also been influences. And don't we tend to take them for granted? So let's list them.

1 The Movies

I think mine started off in the comfort of my mother's womb. The time was 1927, when she personally witnessed the birth of the talkies, sitting through Al Jolson's Jazz Singer three times with me but a bun in the oven. No wonder my first word was “Mammy”. Mum was a real film fan, taking me along with her to the cinema at least three times a week till it was time to start school.

2 The Conker Tree

My next big influence was the big conker (horse chestnut) tree at the end of the garden, which became a galleon if I'd just seen The Black Pirate, Sherwood Forest after Robin Hood, or a cathedral after a screening of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I've been back to visit it recently, and it continues to extend an invitation to my imagination to climb it.

3 Busby Berkeley

Still heavily under the influence of the silver screen, I was mesmerised by the magnificent movies of Busby Berkeley: 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, et al. Art deco in dance of a high order, unashamedly inspiring several numbers in my screen version of The Boyfriend.

4 Jean Cocteau

The films of Jean Cocteau particularly moved me, especially La Belle et la Bête, which had my daughter Molly, then 6, and myself in tears the last time I saw it. Cocteau said it: “An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.”

5 Amelia and the Angel

Years earlier La Belle et la Bête inspired my home movie Amelia and the Angel, about a charming little girl who searches London for a replacement pair of angel wings in time for her appearance in the school nativity play. That landed me a job on the BBC TV arts programme Monitor, which eventually led to a successful career in feature films.

6 Sir Huw Wheldon

In this I was aided and abetted by Huw Wheldon, the boss of Monitor, whose guidance as my guru sharpened my intellect and broadened my horizons. “To make the good popular, and the popular good” was one of his mottos. A Welsh Presbyterian, Wheldon admonished me, in a voice that still echoes, as I was about to start my drama-documentary on the Roman Catholic composer Elgar: “Not too many bloody crucifixes now, Russell.”

7 Classical music

The day I heard Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto on the radio, while vegetating at home after being invalided out of the Merchant Navy, was the day that led me to the discovery of classical music, which changed my life. It eventually led me to make a number of films on composers (Liszt, Bruckner, Mahler, Delius, Debussy, Bartók, Prokofiev, Bax, Vaughan Williams, Holst, etc.) including Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky himself, in The Music Lovers. Listening to music is what transmits to me the images for my films.

8 The Roman Catholic Church

I must mention one of my greatest influences of all - the Catholic Church, to which I was introduced by a Yorkshire station master named Norman Dewhurst. He was a recent convert when I met him and he told me about the great spaceman in the sky and all the benefits I would receive if I became a space cadet. I went for instruction from the Poor Clares in Portobello Road and after six months' Bible-bashing, I was sent to a local priest for baptism. “Have you anything to say before you take this enormous step?” he asked as I faced him across the font. “Well, to tell you the truth, Father,” I stammered, “there are times when I just don't believe.” “Join the club,” he replied. I did, and I never looked back.

9 Skiddaw mountain

I must confess to being possessed a few years later by yet another god - a pagan god: Skiddaw, Coleridge's “God made manifest”, as he called his favourite mountain in the Lake District. Perched above Keswick like a mighty bird of prey with a five-mile wingspread, it seems poised, ready at any moment to take wing, fly down Derwentwater, up the Borrowdale Valley, over Castle Crag and into infinity, drawing the whole world up into its wake.

10 The Other

Last but by no means least is my wife and soulmate Elise, singer, actor, poet, songwriter and inspiration, who pervades my every thought and deed. Everything I do, to quote Ludwig van Beethoven, is “für Elise”. If love is a tree, I live in its shade.

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