Jock Lewes - Co-Founder of the SAS

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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.

Even though the front line wasn’t that far away, Cairo was very much a party city and it was famous for its nightlife, its nightclubs. There were lots of great descriptions. There were a lot of interesting writers who turned up in Cairo at that point. Obviously a lot of soldiers were there from all over the ally powers. There were Czechs, Indians, Brits, Aussies. There was this kind of vibrant community there, various communities rubbing along during war Reg Seekings is another of the SAS’ original members, and is involved in their first parachute drop operation. Theo Barklem-Biggs is best known for playing Ronnie Jr in White Gold, and also appeared in Sliced, The First Team and The Inbetweeners movie. Other cast And yet six months later his Victoria Cross was downgraded to his fourth DSO instead. It’s not known who took this decision, or why, but it remains a wartime controversy that is still ongoing.

An officer and a gentleman

Family of SAS pioneer to travel to Libya to find soldier's grave". The Telegraph. 4 December 2011 . Retrieved 21 November 2022. 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.” Steven Knight’s critically-acclaimed, smash-hit BBC drama SAS Rogue Heroes will return for a second series. According to Knight, the fearsome regiment itself has given the series “the nod of approval". But what happened as it's covered in the show, and what didn't? Here's GQ's helpful guide to the fact and fiction behind the first episode of Knight's boisterous new series. Was Eve, Sofia Boutella's French resistance spy, a real person? Once Stirling and Randolph got into Benghazi, the unit couldn’t get their dinghies to inflate. And at one point, some Italian soldiers tagged along with them, believing Stirling’s men to be Germans on a drill (which is depicted in the episode).

Steven Knight, SAS Rogue Heroes’ creator, writer, and executive producer, says: “After the roaring success of Rogue Heroes I’m delighted to be embarking on the next chapter of the story. Series two will take the SAS into mainland Europe and will take our heroes to the limits of their endurance.”With Stirling and Lewes determined to prove that the concept of the SAS could have actual utility, they take to the skies for a parachute run — both largely unequipped and inexperienced. They head to an airstrip fifty miles east of Cairo, caught in the middle of a terrible sandstorm. Despite the protests of an airman on the ground, they take to the skies, shot and scored with the bombast typical of a Knight drama. Then Stirling jumps, his parachute tears, and… yeah. Crunch. Nicholson, Rebecca (30 October 2022). "SAS: Rogue Heroes review – is the follow up to Peaky Blinders fun? Does Arthur Shelby like a drink?". The Guardian . Retrieved 31 October 2022. 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.

I play Eve Mansour - a spy, an intelligence officer, who is the Deputy Head of French intelligence in Cairo under General de Gaulle’s command. 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.Sandstorms we can’t do anything about and also we got some great footage of them for the series which were otherwise going to costs us a lot of money in visual effects, and we got that for free! I like to be positive about that! Blair was never in prison,” Mayne’s niece, Fiona Ferguson, told The Daily Telegraph. “Him fighting three military policemen never happened. The story was good enough without throwing stuff like that in.” 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] In the show, Stirling, while bedbound, then formulates the plan for what becomes the SAS – a small airborne unit that can drop behind enemy lines and carry out sabotage missions. Still on crutches, he sneaks into British HQ in Cairo, evading the guards, and gets his plan in front of the appropriate general. The story is one of the most legendary SAS tales, but – according to Mortimer – the product of Stirling’s self-serving imagination.