Spurred by his find, Nolan and Emma Thomas, fellow student and girlfriend, later wife and producer, instituted the UCL Film and Television Society.

The directors who showed him the way: the revolutionary spirit of Fritz Lang, the intellectual rigour of Stanley Kubrick, the visual mastery of Ridley Scott, the soaring storytelling of Steven Spielberg, and the hypnotic modernism of Michael Mann all tug at his muse.

‘What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient . . . highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate.’1 Cobb, Inception