“The British are coming!” exclaimed the screenwriter Colin Welland at the Oscars ceremony in 1982, brandishing the statuette he had just won for Chariots of Fire (1981), a small-scale, factually based British sporting drama which took three further prizes that night including best picture. But the film’s director, Hugh Hudson, could only wince as he listened to the speech. “Oh Christ, Colin, why do you say these things?” he later recalled thinking to himself. “You talk too much. You’re too verbose!” Along with his contemporaries Ridley Scott, Alan Parker and Adrian Lyne, Hudson, who has died aged 86, made his...