Military historian John Keegan has been watching a new BBC program on the extraordinary evacuation of the British military from Dunkirk at the outset of World War II. He likes what he's seen, and helps us remember the real history.
The BBC's drama-documentary on Dunkirk, the first episode of which was shown last night, got mixed previews. Unfairly. Having watched all the episodes on video, I am struck by how fair a picture of that extraordinary episode it conveys, how accurate the history is, and how well judged is the script as drama.Posted by Alan at February 19, 2004 12:25 AMPreliminary reviews were alarmist - that the mood was fashionably debunking, that traditional elements of the saga were belittled. I detected none of that.
It was said that the story of the "little ships" - the fishing smacks and pleasure steamers crossing the Channel to bring off soldiers from the beaches - was reduced to a quarrel over who was going to pay. The regional accents were a bit overdone, so that the fishermen's conversation was difficult to follow.
In fact, they merely seemed to be discussing what recompense they would get if they lost their means of livelihood. Perfectly realistic; contemporary critics seem to forget that working people in 1940 lived from hand to mouth. They had no savings and no familiarity with a compensation culture. The truth is that the crews of the little ships went, at great risk to themselves and their precious boats, and played a small but eternally inspiring part in the great rescue.
A more striking anomaly was the casting of the soldiers, particularly those of the 2nd Royal Warwicks, who are shown being shot as prisoners by the SS. The atrocity undoubtedly occurred and the perpetrators were tried for war crimes after 1945.
What jarred was the victims' appearance. The actors were products of 60 years of prosperity and state welfare - tall, strong young men with smooth cheeks, fresh complexions and good teeth. The private soldiers of 1940, only in their twenties, might belong to a different race - pasty, stunted, gap-toothed and ill-fed.
By contrast the casting of the politicians was superb. Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, an advocate of negotiation with Hitler, was almost a lookalike. So was the moribund Neville Chamberlain. Jack Fortune, who played Anthony Eden, was entirely convincing.
Yet in a superior class altogether was Simon Russell Beale as Winston Churchill. Not only does Russell Beale resemble Churchill, in size, physique and colouring. He also transmits his strength of character and force of personality. When he enunciates the warning - as Churchill did in the War Cabinet on May 28 - that "nations which went down fighting rose again but those who surrendered tamely were finished", drama stopped and reality took over.
He delivered the same effect when he reproduced Churchill's challenge to the full Cabinet a few minutes later: "If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground."
Churchill recorded later that his colleagues, Conservative, Labour and Liberal alike, responded by jumping from their seats, seizing his hand and pummelling him on the back. "Had I at this juncture faltered in leading the nation, I have no doubt I should have been hurled out of office."
Via The Telegraph (UK)