Mr. Mac and Me

On the eve of World War I, in poor health and financially strapped, architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his artist wife, Margaret, wash up in a seaside English village. The working-class townspeople regard them with curiosity and suspicion—they are foreigners (from Scotland!), artists (Bohemians!), have German books on their shelves (art catalogs), and roam the countryside with binoculars (the better to view their floral subjects). However, to young Thomas Maggs, son of the local innkeeper, they are exotic and enchanting. In their tidy cottage, he finds a welcome refuge from his schoolwork, his endless round of chores, and his angry, drunken father. Tom and his new friends observe the changing landscape when war breaks out as zeppelins fly overhead, soldiers are billeted in town, and local boys join up and die.