![]() ![]() "I think it would be ridiculous to have the whole of the SAS L Detachment setting out on a raid to the background of Pack Up Your Troubles or White Cliffs of Dover. Music includes tracks from AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, The Clash and The Stranglers. While the appearance of Sofia Boutella, as a glamorous Algerian-French spy who falls for Stirling, is entirely fictional, Lorna continues: "It's easy for those of us who know an awful lot about what really happened to wish for every aspect of the series to be strictly accurate, but I think Steven is right to use dramatic licence and the soundtrack matches the mood." Nobody really spoke about it then, but they had to have people who could sustain a mental and emotional effort. "The SAS members were picked not only for their physical ability, because obviously they had to have endurance, but for their emotional quotient. 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. ![]() "There was a lot of 'off-the-cuffery', by which I mean everything really was do-it-yourself. ![]() My father spoke about the 'big flap' when they started burning all of their documents because that's how close the enemy was. ![]() "You know, Rommel was at the door, the way to India and Asia would be open if North Africa fell and I don't think people are remembering, or perhaps realising, how desperate we were at that time. She said: "It is almost as if they would rather see it treated like a documentary, but it is not a documentary, it is a drama and it is making people aware how crazy and mad the whole scene was in that period. But Lorna also admitted a few former members of the SAS and some historians were not entirely happy with Steven Knight's portrayal. 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. I also knew Jock Lewes' nephew quite well and, from what I know, the actors on screen are all speaking very much in character." He can't see now and can't really hear, so I can't telephone him anymore, but he still has a razor-sharp brain. "Mike is coming up for 103 and I saw him in July. "Ben Macintyre and I sat next to each other at a party for Mike Sadler's 100th birthday and I still visit Mike once or twice a year," she says. That includes crack-navigator Mike Sadler, played by Tom Glynn-Carney on TV, who transported the SAS originals across vast distances when he was part of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) before he left to join the SAS. Lorna says: "The atmosphere Steven Knight has created is totally authentic, and I say that not only with the benefit of having had my father to talk to until he was 91, but I also talked to and interviewed all of the remaining originals while they were alive." 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. Lorna's father "Gentleman" Jim Almonds - played on-screen by 29-year-old Corin Silva - was a key member of the early SAS and personally hand-built much of their basic parachute training equipment as well as jumping out of Jeeps at 30mph to practise parachute landings. Many were wary when the first episode painted SAS founders David Stirling and Blair "Paddy" Mayne - played by Connor Swindells and Jack O'Connell respectively - as drunken mavericks, but, by the second episode, they were comfortable the series was telling the true story of the regiment's heroic exploits. Former Army captain Lorna told the Daily Express: "I am not only in touch with the SAS but also with guys who have left the regiment and they are now calling it Khaki Blinders.They are really enjoying it." ![]()
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