Just an excellent BBC production, showing how the Great War enveloped Europe and how Britain was pulled kicking and screaming into it, three cabinet members resigning and Lord Grey reduced to tears at the very thought of it. Very clearly lays the blame at Germany's door and from all I've read (especially by Franz Fischer) quite deservedly so. It's interesting how on the German and Russian side you are constantly seeing high ranking soldiers in uniform influencing and dictating policy but on the British side you never see a single once. Even when the cabinet are discussing the contemporary Home Rule crisis (the British government's proposal to give Ireland limited self-government which was bitterly resisted by Irish Unionists to the point of armed insurrection). Best line has to be when the German ambassador asks his French counterpart (and cousin!) "Have you been waiting long?" and he replies "Since 1872", the year of France's defeat by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War. A truly wonderful performance from Ian McDiarmind (the Emperor from Star Wars!) as Lord Grey, doing his best in an impossible situation and from Tim Piggot Smith, so usually the cast as the bad guy as Prime Minister Asquith (who will lose his own son in th coming conflict). A truly great depiction of the perils of diplomacy, how miscommunication, misunderstanding and a complete lack of empathy for the mindset of the other side can lead to disaster, something you see repeated time and again throughout history.
Wonderful and thought-provoking stuff.
Wonderful and thought-provoking stuff.