The drama of the Second World War

Foyle's War creator and bestselling crime novelist ANTHONY HOROWITZ reflects on the enduring popularity of the global conflict as a backdrop for TV and film

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WHAT IS it about the Second World War? As a crime writer, it’s often struck me as odd that although most people would be disgusted by a real murder - if it were to take place outside their house — murder stories provide some of the most popular entertainment on TV.

The same is true of the Second World War, nobody would find anything remotely entertaining in what is happening in Gaza or Ukraine right now. And the First World War is a litany of horrors... Ypres, Passchendaele and the Somme are scorched into our consciousness.

But for some reason, we can look back on 1940-45 with something of a smile and a sense of nostalgia. More than 50 million people died but more often than not, TV, film and theatre present the Second World War in an altogether softer light.

Think of the Ealing comedies made just after the war. Passport to Pimlico starts with an unexploded bomb going off. Whisky Galore!, set during the conflict, has the wily inhabitants of a Hebridean island concealing shipwrecked whisky.

The writers I was brought up on, from Eric Ambler to Alistair Maclean, turned the fight against Nazism into a glorified adventure. In 1987, the great John Boorman directed Hope and Glory, a comedy drama which follows a young boy who discovers that there's no better time to be alive particularly when Hitler bombs your school. A similar point of view was taken only last year by Steve McQueen's Blitz, a generally rosy view of wartime through the eyes of a child.