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. A younger brother, David Steel Lewes, was later prominent as a cardiologist in the United Kingdom and was a Royal Air Force medical officer during the war. [8]

It’s about one of the most intense and mysterious combat organisations that started in 1941 during Second World War in North Africa. They were a group of men that were intense, intelligent, and that didn’t go by the rules. She also said she thought the behaviour of some, particularly after the war, owed a lot to post-traumatic stress. Best-selling author Damien Lewis, whose new book SAS Brothers In Arms also tells the story of the founding of the SAS, had access to early memorabilia kept by Paddy Mayne, as well as the soldier's personal effects.

Second World War

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. There was a lot of 'off-the-cuffery', by which I mean everything really was do-it-yourself. They really did go out and raid the New Zealanders, who had everything under the sun including a piano and easy chairs and all that kind of thing while our guys were sleeping on the floor on kit bags.

He’s fantastic to work with. He’s probably one of the most positive directors, if not person, I’ve ever met. Anything could happen - covid, heatstroke, sandstorm - and he’s always there with a glass half full mentality. That’s always helpful for a team to have someone leading us who has so much positivity. According to regimental tradition, Mayne was recruited into the SAS from a prison cell, where he was awaiting court martial for striking his commanding officer. Whatever the truth of this story, Mayne proved to be a great asset to his new unit. Lewes was born in Calcutta to a British father, chartered accountant Arthur Harold Lewes, and an Australian mother, Elsie Steel Lewes. The family moved to Australia and Lewes grew up at Bowral, New South Wales. [3] As a teenager he attended The King's School, Parramatta. [1]After a disastrous operation with massive losses, the parachute option is abandoned and the SAS is instead transported across the Great Sand Sea to enemy airfields in Jeeps. Mayne’s team rapidly proves itself the best destroyer of aircraft on the ground, and his men have no hesitation in massacring the unarmed pilots and ground staff in a hut by the runway. Stirling, leading another team on separate, simultaneous raids, would change tactics to make use of machine-guns mounted on Jeeps. He formed his vehicles into a V-formation and they advanced down the runway pouring a massive volume of fire at aircraft parked on either side. The content of the letters is so at odds with Lewes's patriotic wartime persona that some military historians have suggested his early behaviour may have been a front and that Lewes may have been a government agent.

a b McPherson, Fiona (2004). "Lewes, John Steel (1913–1941)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/74291. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) And then we had to find David Stirling and I count myself quite fortunate that I was included in part of that process and was able to read with one or two actors for the role. When you saw Connor’s take there was no removing him from what you were hoping the project would end up being. Working with him has been one of the highlights of the job, just to see him step up to the mark and take it all in his stride. What he does when the cameras are on is spell-binding. I love anything about the SAS, I think it’s fascinating. I’d read the book by Ben Macintyre when it first came out. When Tom Shankland, who I worked with on Les Miserables a few years ago, rang me up and said “I’m doing this, do you want to be involved?” I said, “Yes Thomas - yes I do Shanky!”.Mortimer says that Bill and David Stirling collaborated on the proposal. “Bill had experience with sabotage and he was a military intellectual,” he says. The Jewish man who shot up the explosives was Peter Haas. His act of heroism enabled Augustin Jordan to escape. “He decided to try and save us by sacrificing himself,” Jordan later said. Did Germans soldiers hunt down and capture David Stirling? I had a great voice coach - Brendan Gunn - who I have worked with for a few years. He is from Northern Ireland.