Darkest Hour

The cinema was packed. "Oh, you'll love it," a friend confidently assured me. And the friend I was with did love it. So maybe I'm just eccentric, but I thought Darkest Hour was terrible. Gary Oldman's terrific, ditto Kristin Scott Thomas, but the basic idea, the shoddy superficiality of the script, just appalled me. If I were feeling really gloomy I'd say it was a hymn to Brexit, a celebration of the people's vote which sets us free. Quirky, lovable Winston Churchill, uncertain under the pressure of smooth appeaseniks like Lord Halifax, isn't sure whether to sticj to hios comabtive guns. so he goes down into the underground, for the first time in his life, talks to randon strangers, and then comes back to the surface to rouse the houses of Parliament by quoting the sage advice of his new-found friends. Just like Ed Miliband on a bad day. The German ambassador got it exactly right. A country which takes comfort in wtaching such films id deeply delusional about his history, its identity and its future chances of survival.