Ananova:

Britain is no longer the home of classical elegance, learning and good manners and has ceased to be a place where "an Englishman's word is his bond", a film producer claims.

Ismael Merchant, whose lavish Edwardian romance Golden Bowl opened at cinemas on Friday, also claims the country is being inherited by a lower class obsessed with computers, making money and football.

Indian-born Mr Merchant, who established Merchant Ivory films 40 years ago with James Ivory, says his film company opted to adapt Golden Bowl, Henry James' novel about a man caught between his wife and another married woman, because modern day Englishmen are too dull.

Jeremy Northiam, Uma Thurman and Kate Beckinsale star in the period drama set in the sumptuous surroundings of the London home of an American billionaire.

Merchant Ivory's previous films, such as Howards End and the Oscar-winning Remains Of the Day, are all period dramas that re-create the aristocratic passion and romance of a more "gracious age".

Mr Merchant, born in Bombay but who left to live in America in 1959, told the Sunday Telegraph: "Today the Englishman's word is not important any more - it's finished; it's gone.

"Who is England being inherited by? The lower classes, not the upper class.

"The ruling class today is the lower class - who talk about making money in the City and football. That is what England is truly about today.

"What made a person civilised in the past is reading, writing and the art of conversation. Now that has all changed. Human relations now are established with laptops, not with other human beings, which makes for a very boring film - unless you have someone springing up out of the laptop to murder someone else.

"A lot of people spend the whole day at a computer and then go home and spend their evenings looking at the internet."