Brettafett
One Too Many
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- UK
The trailer looks interesting, though I think I'll pass on this until it's on the streamers. An interesting story being drawn on, but the trailer feels a bit too mythologised for me, somehow. It'll be interesting to see whether they do address some of the particular challenges of being an Irishman in that context, however.
Holy cow this hit me hard somehow.SHAMROCK SPITFIRE tells the story of Irish fighter pilot Brendan “Paddy” Finucane, who at the age of just 21, became the youngest ever Wing Commander in the Royal Air Force, and one of its greatest and most celebrated fighter aces during World War Two.
Holy cow this hit me hard somehow.
Thanks for posting since I didn’t even know about it. Its aesthetic is reminiscent of 2019’s Midway which I liked very much and saw twice. This is now at the top of my list of new releases this year just behind Oppenheimer.
Irishman in the Battle of Britain?! I had no idea (shows how much I know about the Battle of Britain, I suppose).
Fascinating history, thanks. I hope this film finds a distributor in the US soon since it seems to currently have no release date.Historically there has been a long tradition of Irish boys joining the British military as a way of escaping poverty, or seeing the world, and often both. Fun fact: in WW2 the number of men who volunteered for the British forces from Ireland / The Irish Free State (which officially remained neutral) was double that of those who volunteered from Northern Ireland (which, although much smaller in its population, remained within the UK after 1922). The number of volunteers from NI in WW2 (as in WW1, conscription was never extended to this part of Ireland) was markedly down on that from WW1, NI's primary contribution to WW2 really being shipbuilding (and hosting many Canadians and American troops as they arrived ahead of D-Day particularly).
One of those Irishmen who signed up to fight with the Brits in WW2 was my Scout Leader's father. A Dublin man, he joined the RN and was part of the forces who liberated Norway, as memory serves. I remember him in his nineties when he moved in with the family in our village, after his wife died. Quite the character, great sense of humour. Quiet for some time, and then he'd come out with a real zinger. Very dry wit. I don't know whether he experienced any of the negative side of the mixed reaction Irishmen from the 26 counties who joined up with the British often did (unsurprisingly, given in 1939 they still weren't two full decades away from having fought a war of independence against the British Empire). The worst of it of course was for those who resigned from the Irish Defence Forces to go and fight the Nazis, as they were treated by the state as deserters for many years.