Keira’s weepy wartime tale of stoic grief and sexism
Keira Knightley has acted in several films set during the Second World War – Atonement and The Imitation Game, to name but two – and finds the era “endlessly fascinating”. Yet, as she explained in My Grandparents’ War (Channel 4), she did not know exactly what her own family went through. This is true for many of us, due in part to the fact that people of that generation did not spend the rest of their lives dwelling on it, but got on with living.
It is striking, in this time of emotional over-sharing, to see how different our approach used to be. Knightley’s grandfather, Joseph “Mac” Macdonald, lost his younger brother, Wilf, whose ship was sunk by the Japanese in the Battle of the Java Sea. Mac wrote a letter of condolence to Wilf ’s sweetheart, telling her that Wilf would not have wanted them to give in to grief. Knightley read it here, and it was all the more heartbreaking for its tone: “The kid was not the mourning type… chin up to us, Doreen, my dear. Cheerio. All the best, Mac.”
Reading of Wilf ’s death reduced Knightley to tears, in what was the most poignant moment of the programme. Had he died a hero, she wondered? “He probably didn’t even know what he was doing there. And he didn’t go down in naval history, so what the f--k was it for?” Of course it was for the greater good, she acknowledged, but “that wouldn’t have made his mum feel any better”.
Mac, a Royal Navy sonar operator who died before Knightley was born, was the subject of half of this programme. In an attempt to give a sense of what Mac’s job entailed, the programme showed old newsreels and played the sounds that he would have heard as German U-boats approached.
Knightley also learned about her grandmother’s work during the war. Jan Macdonald was a secretary working with the US Army, helping to organise the movement of Allied troops ahead of D-day. A job reference from her boss ended with mention of her “neat and pleasing appearance”, which raised Knightley’s hackles. “If that was me I’d be really offended. Really? I’ve done all that and on my reference you’re talking about how neat and pleasing I am?” Different times.
In an unexpectedly timely piece of scheduling, the series Westminster Abbey: Behind Closed Doors
began on Channel 5. The series was produced before the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The voiceover had been re-recorded to make reference to recent events, and the programme was dedicated to her. But it still felt a little strange to hear someone referring to the Commonwealth Day service in March as “about as big as events get in the Abbey”.
Still, there was nothing here in bad taste. It is one of those jolly series that Channel 5 turns out with regularity – Inside the Tower of London was another, and Kensington Palace: Behind Closed Doors – in which we meet the good-natured, hard-working people who keep the wheels turning. Here they included Mantas Nemcausakas and his team, whose job involves laying out 2,000 chairs for the Abbey’s grandest services. At the late Queen’s funeral, we saw the guests seated in the Abbey, but I doubt it occurred to many of us to think about the vital backroom staff who had made the seating arrangements.
Also featured: the vergers, whose jobs seem to entail a lot of washing and ironing, and the Clerk of the Works, whose greatest fear is that a bit of crumbling masonry will fall from a great height onto a passing tourist. Perhaps the luckiest staff member is the security beadle, who gets to survey London from the roof each morning when he raises the flag on the northwest tower. “I look around me and think how fortunate I am,” he said.
The theme running through this and similar series is how the ancient co-exists with modern concerns. The Abbey lost millions in tourist income during the pandemic, at one point to the tune of £1million per month. It now needs to get people through the door. Visitors can pay extra for a “Hidden Highlights” tour, although on the evidence shown here, one of the highlights is visiting a VIP loo. “Benedict Cumberbatch has used it,” said the guide, to oohs from the party.
A conservator with the rather fitting name of Krista Blessley cleaned the Coronation Chair, which involves flicking the dust off it with a goat-hair brush, in the direction of the vacuum cleaner. How extraordinary that the chair is covered in 18th- and 19th-century graffiti from Westminster schoolboys and passing visitors. “P Abbot slept in this chair 5-6 July 1800,” reads one scrawled message.
My Grandparents’ War ★★★ Westminster Abbey ★★★