As oldies will know, The Cruel Sea is a 1953 film based on a book of the same name.
The Cruel Sea is a 1953 British war film starring Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden, Denholm Elliott, Stanley Baker, Liam Redmond, Virginia McKenna and Moira Lister. The film, which was made by Ealing Studios seven years after the end of the Second World War, was directed by Charles Frend and produced by Leslie Norman. It is based on the best selling 1951 novel of the same name by former naval officer Nicholas Monsarrat, though the screenplay by Eric Ambler omits some of Monsarrat's grimmest moments.
There is a modern lesson to be spun from The Cruel Sea concerning leadership, grit and hard choices.
Opening in late 1939, just as war breaks out, Lieutenant-Commander
George Ericson, a British Merchant Navy officer in the Royal Naval Reserve, is recalled
to the Royal Navy and given command of HMS Compass Rose, a newly built Flower-class
corvette
intended for convoy escort duties...
Boris Johnson could take this lesson from far tougher times and apply it to the coronavirus debacle. He could show some grit and hard-nosed leadership by throwing Imperial College and its epidemiology model under a bus. Lob a few depth charges in their direction too. He could tell the world what the world knows already, that the model was no good and advice based on it was both useless and damaging. He won't of course - he isn't Lieutenant-Commander George Ericson.
4 comments:
Throwing Imperial College and the Ferguson model under a bus would be simple, had Boris not trashed the economy and our way of life through his adherence to it in the first place. Far more precious that a bunch of academics - more precious even than the truth - is the myth of governmental competence.
Sam - I think he could still do if he moves quickly. A hint has been made by Therese Coffey but it probably isn't robust enough. To my mind the political class as a whole needs to do something about being dragged down by bad advice.
The siege of Calais being another example. The loss of around 4,000 troops to rescue 300,000.
Longrider - in a way that's a good reminder of what Prince Harry threw away, the respect due to military courage. Now it is much rarer than it was and he chucked it for the trashy world of celebrity culture.
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