Leslie Howard

Leslie Howards career as a Hollywood star and his ambitions for the British film industry were well known. He contributed substantially to cinema history, featuring in Gone With the Wind, The Scarlet Pimpernel and Pygmalion, amongst others. But behind his charm was a perceptive and determined man. An ambivalent identity and a penetrating intelligence gave him the confidence to inform world opinion at the time of the Second World War. His work then is almost unknown, and startlingly unexpected. Howard made efforts to discover exactly what was happening in Nazi Germany and Austria, and what was intended. He struggled with the establishment back in England to get the British film industry restarted in 1940, and aimed to use it to give a lead in democratic values and unity. He worked secretly and alone to develop British propaganda in America, and to help the SOE and the Free French in Britain. He became a well-loved figurehead in Britains darkest days, and Churchill made effective use o