Jock Lewes - Co-Founder of the SAS

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I had given up hope of ever seeing another second world war series or movie that did not have me grinding my teeth in irritation at unnecessary historical mistakes. Worst of all are the deceitful rewrites, changing characters and events in vital ways yet still claiming some sort of authenticity, such as the unforgivably distorted film The Imitation Game, in which Benedict Cumberbatch plays legendary codebreaker Alan Turing. As seen in the series, the SAS were named by Dudley Clarke, who had already created the Special Air Service as a fictitious regiment – a clever ploy to confuse and misdirect the enemy (Dominic West’s Clarke is seen wearing women’s clothes and make-up in one scene – a reference to Clarke once being arrested in Madrid while dolled-up in ladies’ clothing). I’m always excited to go to set and see what everyone else thinks about what we’re going to do that day. I’ll go in of course with a plan, and I’m a great believer in communicating and prepping your ideas as early as you can so you are not springing surprises on people. I think fundamentally you just want to get there and make sure and listen to people. Encourage them to be as brilliant as they can be, and just enjoy watching that kind of magical thing. Of course you know you are telling a story, I think everyone understands the goal of what you are doing and the process should be as joyous as it can be. That’s my fundamental thing about what a film set should be like. It’s a glorified sandpit, and – when filming in the Sahara - we are in the biggest one in the world!

There is no recorded footage of Paddy speaking, which is helpful for me. It just means I have got a bit of room for manoeuvre, instead of trying to hone into something that is famously known. I can sort of reimagine it a little bit.Two aspects of the series Lorna thinks members of the regiment, past and present, might not be happy with are the extent to which spymaster Dudley Clarke (Dominic West) is credited with inventing the SAS and the hint Paddy Mayne was gay.

This show is an important and essential part of history about real men who fought during an important time. This show is about the bravery and the courage of these men, and the insanity of these men. Lewes may be accompanied by up to 3 men (Veterans armed with anti-tank grenades and submachine guns, pistols or rifles/carbines as depicted on the model) for +19pts each A vote for Nigel Farage's lot would put Starmer in No 10, warns Rishi Sunak... but he admits he's 'too busy' to watch the former UKIP leader on I'm A Celeb Instead, the consequence of eye-catching raids that did short-term damage to the enemy was a high casualty rate and the use of resources that could have been used elsewhere. Big Dave' successfully argued the case that Britain needed to send guerilla fighters behind German lines to create chaos.Aside from his oft-overlooked but vital contributions as the SAS’ training officer, Lewes would also invent the eponymously named ‘Lewes Bomb’, a combined explosive and incendiary device designed specifically to meet the unique requirements of the SAS. Compact and light at around a pound in weight, and made of a mixture of diesel oil and plastic explosive, it could be easily transported in large numbers by the men of the SAS over long distances, and proved to be very effective at destroying enemy equipment, particularly fuel dumps and most especially aircraft. Although the detonators could be somewhat unreliable (something not really in Lewes’ control), it was nevertheless an undeniably useful weapon, and a crucial component of the infrastructure destruction raids that formed the bread and butter of the early SAS. Lewes travelled to the United Kingdom to attend Christ Church, Oxford, from September 1933, where he read philosophy, politics and economics. In 1936–37, he was president of the Oxford University Boat Club. During 1937 he voluntarily gave up his place in the Oxford Blue boat crew, to assist it in winning that year's University Boat Race, [4] and ending a 15-year winning streak by Cambridge. [5] [6] Lewes travelled to Berlin to work for the British Council and, [1] before the events of Kristallnacht, was briefly an admirer of Hitler and the Nazi state. [7] He was also the only original who kept a contemporaneous diary, which informed not only Lorna's biography of her father, Gentleman Jim, but countless other historical accounts of the SAS founders, including Ben Macintyre's book SAS Rogue Heroes on which the BBC series is based. It’s got a suitably star-studded line-up. Let’s meet the cast of SAS: Rogue Heroes: Dominic West as Lieutenant Colonel Wrangel Clarke

In sharp contrast to Stirling, Lieutenant Paddy Mayne, a rugger international from Ulster, may be a lover of poetry, but he is better known as an unexploded bomb likely to go off as soon as he has downed more than a bottle of whisky or rum. Mayne is first shown meeting Stirling in a military prison, having beaten up his own commanding officer for interrupting a game of chess, although this is almost certainly SAS myth rather than the truth. SARAH VINE: Royal biographer Omid Scobie may be a leech... but the treachery of Harry was so much worse I think ultimately they’re fighting for something that’s bigger than themselves, even though there is a lot of ego involved, narcissism and neurotic behaviours, but they are fighting for a cause that is bigger than themselves and they do so very effectively. My uncle fell for the grandeur, the permanency and respectability of the new regime and failed to notice or criticise the encroaching anti-Semitic tendencies of the era,' said his nephew. There was a big prep period for this and I’m really grateful that I got to do it. We had a big rehearsal period before filming which was really helpful for all the guys to really get to know each other and just hash out key scenes in person. The bootcamp was intense - we would start at about 7am when it was already about 30 degrees in Morocco, so you could easily burn and get sun stroke even at that time of day. It was hard – lots of marching around in the sand - but it was fun and a real bonding experience. Reading David Stirling’s autobiography gave me a really great insight into his mind, and reading books about people’s perspective on him was informative.Still, SAS Rogue Heroes has been well received by people who know their stuff, such as the historian Antony Beevor, often grumpy about historical accuracy in war films. “Knight has of course taken liberties with the precise record,” he wrote in The Guardian, “but they are mainly additions, fleshing out characters and context, not distortions.” I really have to take my hat off to Steven Knight. The writer of Peaky Blinders has adapted Ben Macintyre’s SAS Rogue Heroes, the authorised history of the Special Air Service, and turned it into the best dramatic series the BBC has produced for ages. Her brother, retired Brigadier John Almonds, who served three tours with the SAS and was the regiment's chief of staff, was among those enjoying the show. But Lorna also admitted a few former members of the SAS and some historians were not entirely happy with Steven Knight's portrayal.

Even the SAS's first raid proved to be disaster, with the men failing to achieve a single hit on the enemy. Instead, 34 of those who took part were killed, injured or missing, with only 21 returning to base.But Mr Macintyre's book does also reveal how the SAS's contribution to Britain's victory in the war was actually not that significant. Stirling was captured by the Germans in January 1943 after yet another raid. Although he did initially escape, the officer was re-captured by the Italians and, despite another four attempts to get away, he was imprisoned for the rest of the war at the infamous Colditz Castle.