After a while Luciano Salce called me for the film Il federale, as I had already worked with him. I composed the music for the film, and that started my career as a composer of film scores. I must say that working for cinema has been a precious experience because it gave me the chance to experiment with my ideas, to listen to them performed by an orchestra and then use them for a precise aim, ie: the film. Generally speaking, I think that a good composer for film must have a complete knowledge of composition and orchestration techniques, but also a wide knowledge of musical styles and languages.Some composers find writing for the cinema frustrating.

Five-times nominated, he has yet to win an Oscar. How did you become a film composer?Almost by chance. I had just finished my studies at the conservatory in Rome and I needed to work, so I started arranging songs and records and working for TV and radio. Morricone has scored music for more than 400 films, from sword and sandals epics to Sergio Leone's revolutionary series of Spaghetti westerns, and worked with directors including Pier Paulo Pasolini, Brian DePalma and Pedro Almodovar Five-times nominated, he has yet to win an Oscar. Ennio Morricone, the world's most revered film composer, celebrates his 75th birthday tomorrow in a gala concert at the Royal Albert Hall. McLaren, who recently moved to France, was unavailable for comment. Mr Edwards, when asked what he thought his brother would make of his decision to sell the items, said: "I don't know. We are going to find out."The entertainment sale is at Bonhams in Knightsbridge on 18 November.

Mr Edwards suspects his father was employed by the intelligence services and took advantage of the Second World War to establish a new identity, which he was later to assume full time. After divorcing their mother in 1948, he disappeared, but resurfaced in 1989. Soon afterwards, McLaren and his brother located him living with a dog and a cache of firearms in an underground bunker on Romney Marshes.The brothers were at his funeral when he died three years ago, aged 80, but they never prised from him details of his other life. In it, he lifts the lid on a family enigma that has obsessed him and his brother: the true identity of their father, who vanished when McLaren was two years old and re-surfaced 41 years later.McLaren senior, whose first name was Peter, is known to have been born in Cuba, but beyond that Mr Edwards insists neither he nor his brother knows anything of his history. "I'm now 60 years old and this is my property, so I've decided to sell it because I thought it offered an interesting slant on Malcolm," said Mr Edwards.Among the most intriguing items is an interview given by Mr Edwards for an as-yet-unpublished book. Others show McLaren mingling with guests at the 1958 bar mitzvah, in London's Cumberland Hotel, and in one photo, the rock'n'roll rebel is even depicted in the most embarrassingly establishment guise imaginable - as a boy scout.The photos form but part of a patchwork archive of family memorabilia to be sold by McLaren's older brother, Stuart Edwards, at Bonhams auction house this month.Mr Edwards confesses he has yet to warn his brother. Prayer book in hand, hair combed into a neat side-parting, he smiles nervously at the camera.