Similarly One of Ours (Episode 10) in September 1940 follows a bombing raid on Germany, focussing almost entirely on David, ignoring the rest of the family. While reading the book, one thing that struck me was the “tourism” that followed the war, as people flocked to the battlefields to witness the scene of all the action. One of the small pleasures of watching the DVDs is spotting actors who later became well-known or who haven’t been seen for a while; for instance, John Ronane and Tenniel Evans (sadly, many of the cast is no longer with us). We read war comics, watched war films, and made models of the most famous aeroplanes from the Battle of Britain, like the Spitfire and Hurricane.

People generally waited until their old set gave up the ghost before switching, and in those days sets could last a long time. As well as documenting a family at war, this book also demonstrates the rich tapestry of social events and concerts in Lerwick during this time of great social change. But this method of programme making involves considerable compromise and eventually gave way to the making of drama all on film. The Ashtons have two daughters, Margaret (Mags) a schoolteacher, and Freda who is the chirpy independent one, and three sons. The real problem, though, is not so much with this series but with the considerably superior offerings that came later.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Although this item comes in Dutch packaging the subtitles are easily removed by using the subtitle button. So we are now looking at 1969 – the year before transmission began – a crucial year for the planning of the series. So we would progress slowly through it, scene by scene, until everyone knew what they had to do when the time for recording arrived on the following day. Two of the Stout sisters, Elizabeth and Anne, extensively toured the battlefields on their free days away from the charitable work they were engaged in on the continent.

Hazard also uses ‘Senoritas’ to describe the Spanish (probably inoffensive), Reds to describe the Spanish Republicans, and Jerries to describe the Germans. The central character, paterfamilias Edwin (Colin Douglas) appears in only a couple of short scenes. It’s the realistic touch, or the brilliant acting, or the interesting story, though probably all of them together. The characters I cared a lot about in this series were Lesley Nunnerley as Margaret, formerly an Ashton, who gets married to Ian Thompson as John Porter.A brief scene between brother and sister Robert (David Dixon) and Freda (Barbara Flynn), the youngest Ashton siblings. However, among the impressive line-up of prestige drama production that was cited in the programme, including Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown and Prime Suspect, no mention at all was made of one of Granada’s biggest hits of its formative years: the epic series A Family at War (1970 to 1972) . That’s a tribute to the actress, but we realized that her character was carrying over for us from the (later) brilliant series written by Andrew Davies, A Very Peculiar Practice, in which she plays the right-on feminist Dr Magda, who sees everything in a sexual light! It is also interesting as a reminder of the very different social customs that existed at that time. When I read about the young Margaret Stout offering lectures on food economy, I wondered how well this would have gone down outside the bright lights of the well-heeled Lerwegians who made up the town’s middle and upper classes.