The forgotten hero of British cinema

Sandra Lean, widow of the film director Sir David, is recalling a recent item on Radio 4 about the making of the film Atonement. Joe Wright, Atonement's young director, was apparently so enamoured of her husband's work that he instructed his cinematographer to watch Lean's entire back catalogue in a bid to capture some of the director's magic. It's a story that fills Lady Lean with immense pride - and utter bewilderment.

"I just didn't like the movie," she declares, perched on the arm of a sofa. "I thought it was terrible and badly directed. Everyone goes on about the long shot of the beach at Dunkirk, but I thought it was boring and laborious. Obviously they were trying to get the feel of a David Lean epic but they failed. Without David, it's not so easy."

"Cantankerous? Yes. Hugely difficult to live with? Yes. But we were soul mates"

It's ironic, then, that at tonight's Bafta ceremony, where Atonement is bound to be honoured, there will also be a tribute to Lean - the first in a year-long series of events to commemorate the centenary of his birth on March 25. All 15 of the director's classic movies, including Doctor Zhivago and The Bridge on the River Kwai, will be released in cinemas nationwide. There will also be a major retrospective of his work at the Cannes Film Festival.

Despite the renewed interest, Lady Lean has come to regard her late husband as the forgotten hero of British cinema. While she has no doubt that the British love his films, she believes they care very little for the man himself.

"I find it strange that David wasn't properly recognised in this country. I think that's because the British like actors rather than directors. We don't appreciate cinema in the way the Americans, the French, the Spanish or the Italians do. It's sad. It's a different thing in America. David always used to say: 'Babe, the Americans have always been wonderful to me.' We would go to restaurants in Los Angeles and film students would wait outside just to get his autograph."

Now in her mid-sixties, Lady Lean is delivering her broadside from her lavishly furnished Knightsbridge house, a stone's throw from Harrods. Were it not for her home's proximity to Britain's most famous department store, she might never have met the double-Oscar winner. It was in Harrods Food Hall in 1985 that the fortysomething art dealer Sandra Cooke, as she was then, had her first accidental encounter with a then 77-year-old Lean.

"I found myself walking up to him and telling him how much I admired his films. I thought he was going to be extremely pompous and wave me aside. But no, he was charming. He talked to me for about 20 minutes."

Later that day when she told friends of the encounter, she discovered one of them would be dining with Lean that very evening. "Apparently David was very silent over the meal. People kept asking him what was wrong. He eventually said: 'My dear, I was in Harrods this morning buying grapes and a girl came up to me. I can't get her face out of my head. That is what is the matter with me.'"

The couple began their relationship in earnest several weeks later. "At first I wouldn't see him because he was married and I didn't want to get involved," she says. "I know there are women who will go for somebody famous and just step over everyone. I need the sleep-at-night principle. After our second meeting, in a book shop, we went for a walk and things started from there."

Lady Lean claims the age gap didn't worry her. Neither did the fact that he had already been married five times. "But what did worry me was myself. I remember one day thinking: 'Are you in love with the man? Or are you in love with who he is and what he is?' I decided I was in love with the man."

At the beginning of their relationship the couple embarked on a six-week holiday - which ended up lasting seven months - taking in Singapore, Australia, Tahiti and Hong Kong.

Back in Britain, the pair moved into the director's riverside home in Limehouse, east London, where he began one of the busiest periods of his career. A planned screenplay for Empire of the Sun, which would be produced by Steven Spielberg, never materialised. But Lean, by now reunited with his estranged writing partner Robert Bolt, with whom he had worked on Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter, did complete an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo.

Such frenetic activity was something Lady Lean had to cope with. "If you're living with a man, you have to really understand him. You just can't take him at face value. I think his other wives were jealous of his career. Two of them were actresses [Kay Walsh and Ann Todd] and I think they thought they should have been the centre of attention.