Wissenswertes

The death of Ralph Follett Wigram (C.M.G.) was supposed to be caused by a pulmonary hemorrhage, but many assumed that it had been suicide. The absence of Follett's parents at his funeral would seem to support the latter belief. In Sir Winston Churchill's history of World War II, he referred to Ralph Wigram as one of the great unsung heroes.

Ralph Wigram, C.M.G. (the Foreign Office secretary who provided information on clandestine German rearmament) was one of four leading individuals amongst a group of around twenty who assisted Sir Winston Churchill in this manner. It is agreed that he provided this information with the tacit consent of his supervisor, Robert Vansittart, who was also alarmed by the rearmament. While this movie seems to indicate that Wigram's efforts were illegal, Churchill was a Member of Parliament and Privy Counselor, which would grant him access to such information. Wigram had been thwarted by the Baldwin regime and he took things as far as holding a press conference in 1936, but this garnered little attention. This sharing of secret documents with Churchill began in late 1934 and lasted for two years, when he apparently committed suicide in December 1936. Wigram's wife Ava made several trips to Germany before the outbreak of the war and shared her observations in her correspondence with Churchill. In 1941, nearly five years after Robert's death, Ava married Sir John Anderson, a member of the War Cabinet who became Chancellor of the Exchequer. She died in 1974 at the age of eighty-seven. As for his temperament and character, Wigram's secretary referred to him as "the authentic local deity" and "the departmental volcano". He was also described by others as having a visionary understanding of what was secretly unfolding in Germany. In Churchill's multi-volume history of World War II, he referred to Wigram as one of the great unsung heroes.

The poem that Churchill recites, beginning "Who is in charge of the clattering train?", is "Death and his brother sleep" by Edward James Milliken.

In 2016, Mark Lawson ranked this for The Guardian as the most memorable television portrayal of Sir Winston Churchill and praised Finney's "meticulous preparation" for the role.

The cast includes two Oscar winners: Dame Vanessa Redgrave and Jim Broadbent; and two Oscar nominees: Albert Finney and Tom Wilkinson.