Tonight on BBC 1 there’s the first of a drama series about the origins of the SAS which, according to the Radio Times includes a punch-up in a bar in Cairo in 1941 between British Commandoes and Australian soldiers. Sounds pretty tough and, as SAS Rogue Heroes is written by Steven Knight, who also wrote Peaky Blinders, I’m sure that it will be staged with plenty of swagger.
So, when guys as tough as this get into a brawl, who do you send in to restore order?
Well in real life, this man, my dad, Robert Douglas Bell. A sergeant in the Royal Artillery, he evidently had to skills and the character to take on drunken SAS men and, for that matter, the local drug dealers too.
I’m still getting into colourisation using the neural filters in Photoshop and I’m not convinced that everyone wore blue – I feel that the tank top should be bottle green – but I do think that the process brings a small black and white print vividly to life.
