Dan Snow's History Hit - SAS Rogue Heroes: Paddy Mayne with Ben Macintyre

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

Lieutenant-Colonel 'Paddy' Mayne is a legendary figure in the history of the British Special Forces. Valiant but volatile, confident yet conflicted, Paddy embodied the fighting spirit of the SAS. Ben Macintyre is the author of the book SAS: Rogue Heroes, the only approved history of the unit which was recently turned into a BBC drama series of the same name. Ben joins us to talk about the formation of this legendary fighting force, and the life and times of its most colourful character.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. On today's podcast we're going to be talking about the birth of the SAS, that British Special Forces unit that served with distinction in North Africa, was disbanded after the war, but is now at the heart once again of Britain's Special Forces. It's a story shrouded in myth, in legend. But it's a story we've covered before on this podcast. We've interviewed several great historians on this topic. One of them is Ben McIntyre, who's joining me again on the podcast today because he wrote the book on which the new TV hit series, Rogue Heroes, is based. A new dramatisation of the early years of the SAS. It's a fantastic bit of historical drama. People have been arguing about its authenticity. People, yet again, not quite getting the memo. The fact that it's there, dramatised, lots of actors playing the

parts, reciting script written by a contemporary writer, means it's not actually a historical document. It's not a textbook. So don't panic, folks. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. It's a wonderful imagining of the start of the SAS, which yes, is rooted in great history written by Ben McIntyre and others, but it's also a place where creativity is allowed to flourish, both the writing, which is fantastic, and the acting, which is great as well. Now, I'm going to ask Ben McIntyre about the show because it's based on his work. We're going to talk a little bit about that, but I really want to ask him about Robert Blair Mayne, aka Paddy Mayne. He ended the war as Lieutenant Colonel. He won three distinguished service orders, highly decorated, founder member

of the SAS. That followed a pre-war life of playing rugby for Ireland and the British Lions going on a South Africa tour, in which it was always said that he relaxed by wrecking hotels and fighting dockers. He's brilliantly portrayed by Jack O'Connell in the TV series. He's created one of the most extraordinarily engaging characters I can think of in any British drama recently. But how much did that tell us about the original Paddy Mayne? I'm going to get Ben McIntyre to talk me through the career of this extraordinary and very elusive man. Blair Mayne died, sadly, at just 40 in 1955 from a car crash in his native Newtonards in Northern Ireland. He's a figure that I've been obsessed with really since I first started making TV shows

and came across him in my early 20s. The only man surviving from that time is Mike Sadler. He's now over 100 years old. I was lucky enough to interview him as well. You can hear that interview on the podcast if you look at the feed. I broadcast that a few days ago,

so please go and have a listen to that. But in the meantime, here is the best-selling author, the fantastically nice Ben McIntyre. He's long been a friend. I'm so glad one of his books has been turned into such a thrilling drama. Here's Ben McIntyre talking about the early SES and Robert Blair Mayne. Enjoy. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Ben McIntyre, thank you very much for coming back on the podcast.

It's a pleasure to be here. Well, it's a pleasure to be talking to you. It's such a fun TV series, this, isn't it? Oh, well, I'm glad you enjoyed it, Dan. I loved it. I mean, I would say that, wouldn't I? But I don't have to. I'm not under contract to say that.

And I think they've done an amazing job with SAS. And it's not a particularly easy one to do because so many people feel invested in the SAS. There is so much mythology surrounding the SAS that it's a tricky prospect in some ways. And I think what Steve Knight has done brilliantly is to kind of remain true to the spirit of the whole thing without trying to glamorize war or the SAS or the brutality of what was going on. Because actually, I mean, not all of your listeners would have got that far, but once you get to the end of the final episode, you realise that these people are

being chewed up by war in some ways. It's not a particularly sort of dignifying or glorious escapade. It's actually incredibly damaging for everybody. And also, there is so much luck. The idea that if you're looking for kind of superheroes in the past, people who could shape the course of nations and battles, you get the strong impression here, which I'm sure you had in your research, that, goodness me, we're all just flotsam on a great sea of luck. Some of our decisions work, some of them don't. We get away with it, and sometimes we don't get away with it. And you really see that in this story. Yeah, and there's that brilliant line that Steve Knight has crafted in it,

where the main character, David Sterling, says most of war is complete chaos. Mostly, we don't know what's going on. It's all about accident and fate and luck or lack of it. It's so interesting, isn't it? People often ask me, you know, how much did the SAS really make a difference in North Africa? Of course, that's an impossible question to answer. It's like any sort of counterfactual question is, you have to ask, well, what would have happened if they hadn't been there? But it's pretty clear that they did degrade the sort of Axis air power in that part of North Africa at a critical moment. And perhaps even more importantly, they created a kind of morale boosting operation that was hugely important. And Churchill was

completely across that, as was Sterling. I mean, one of the interesting things about going through the archive was the number of photographs in there, in which it is quite clear the SAS participants knew that they were going to be important figures in history, and they are dressed for the part. They look like a rock band that have just come off stage. You know, they're wearing this kind of variety of headgear, they're wearing the bandoliers, they're touting all sorts of different kinds of weaponry, because they know they're being photographed, and they know they're part of posterity. And they also know that they're having an effect on the war and the fighting machine at a time when, of course, the war in North Africa was not going well. And this myth, this instant legend of the kind of phantom warriors

coming in, these rogue heroes coming in from the desert and sort of destroying and then disappearing back, that had a hugely powerful effect, which, of course, is impossible to measure. I know that it's based on your book, but what strikes me about the TV series is actually, it may or may not be perfectly accurate, but it's a combination of brilliant artists, both the actors and the writer, coming together with wonderful producers, and it's inspired by your work to produce something quite different, which is a piece of art, which isn't history.

And you know, you shouldn't be tested on it in your A-level or your undergrad, but it's wonderful and there to be enjoyed like turner's painting of hannibal crossing the alps i mean that's not what it actually looked like or like shakespeare's henry v right it's there to be enjoyed and stimulate and excite and hopefully people go and read your book but but you look at this and you don't think that's exactly what happened on those days right no absolutely not and nor should you i think i mean I think there's an awful lot of nonsense talked about, you know, the accuracy of films and look, if suddenly Steve had turned around and this unit was entirely American, yeah, you'd have a very good reason for kicking up a stink. But the truth is, this is a different art form. This is a completely different sort of

operation that is going on here. And it's translating reality into something that is an emotional reality. It's not a literal reality. And it's so funny that people on Twitter sort of steaming around about, oh, is it a perfectly accurate portrayal of Paddy Mayne? It's not meant to be. It's a different thing that's going on here. And I think you're absolutely right. If it interests people in the history, and look, I would say this is the writer of the book on which it's based. To me, that series demands that you go and read the book. It's got that wonderful disclaimer at the beginning that says the things that seem most impossible in this story are mostly true. And that to me says, right, go and read the book, because if you want to find out what really happened, the book will tell you. And he's quite right about that, that I think that it sort of,

in a way, embraces the difference between the genres in a completely honest way. Look, it has a rocking soundtrack. It's got ACDC as you're going into the desert. Of course, that's not, you know, they were going into the sounds of, well, they weren't going to sounds of anything, actually. But if they were hearing anything, it was probably Vera Lynn. But I think that's a brilliant embracing of the idea that this isn't supposed to be a kind of documentary operation. It's a way of translating the past into the present in a way that lots more people can understand and get a handle on. And if there's one thing that you do brilliantly, Dan, on this podcast, and things that I try and do, it's to say to people, history isn't a dusty story of facts and figures and movements and great men necessarily. It's about character and personality and accident and emotion

and all sorts of things that we in the 21st century can sort of get our heads around. And I think he's done a brilliant job of that. I completely agree. I love watching it. And I don't feel that my understanding of the Second World War is somehow being corrupted by it. All it has had me doing is walking around swearing a lot. It's just had me embrace my inner swearing. Your inner swearing. No, it's brilliant. Again, not entirely untrue to life, actually. I don't think there'd have been quite as much swearing by and in front of officers, but my goodness, I mean, the potty mouths were there from the beginning. I think that's exactly right. Look, and films have always done that. The screen has

always done that. The moment the war was over, we saw a flood of black and white movies that were not literal representations of what was going on during the war. They were stories that allowed the tellers to tell them in a way that their audience could get an emotional grip on. The Longest Day is not a documentary. The Great Escape is miles from being a documentary. All those cold it stories, they're not literal reality. They're something much more profound in some ways. They're broader in a way. I mean, what's so interesting about the SAS Rogue Heroes series is that it's the demographic is very young. Perhaps that's unsurprising in some way, but you know, we think of the war as being grandpa's war, that it's only going to be watched by sort of men over 60 in red trousers. That is not the case. That is not

what's happened with this series. It's being watched by young people, not all of them male. I mean, it's a very interestingly broad audience. Lots of people of a sort of