Essentially Who Do You Think You Are? minus the bits where relatives end up in a Victorian poorhouse, My Grandparents’ War (Channel 4) is a well-made show. This edition featured Kit Harington, an actor you may know from Game of Thrones. The series usually has actors as its subjects, which is a smart decision. They know what makes good television, and in the absence of a presenter they are able to carry the whole thing.
Harington was a likeable guide and subject as he explored the backgrounds of his grandparents. His paternal grandparents, John and Lavender Harington, were colourful figures. They met in the Caribbean while working for British intelligence during the Second World War. John was a high-ranking officer whose duties included keeping tabs on the Nazi-sympathising Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
This was all great stuff, so there was really no need for the programme to throw in some guff about James Bond, but it is somehow law that anything relating to British spies must include 007. The tenuous link here was that John Harington was based in Jamaica, and Ian Fleming spent time there too, and so could John have been Fleming’s inspiration? “I’m now going to go and tell everyone that my grandfather was actually Bond!” said Harington.
The actor’s maternal grandparents had a more ordinary war, in the sense that they did not cross paths with the rich and famous, but their experiences were just as worthy of note. Mick Catesby served as an officer in the Royal Artillery and fought at the Battle of Monte Cassino, for which he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery. His wife, Pippa, became a nurse in Exeter, a career which she loved but gave up when Mick returned home. His time in Italy left him with what we would now name as PTSD, and their marriage sadly broke down. Harington said that his grandfather never spoke about the war and did not even want to acknowledge that he had won a medal.
Amid the sadness, though, it was the lovely written accounts of the courtships that illuminated the stories. Pippa fell in love with Mick when, as a patient in her hospital, he gave her his tin hat during a bombing raid; or Lavender telling her family that she had become engaged to John after only a week: “not good-looking”, she informed them, but “delightful sense of humour… loves shooting, fishing and sailing. Loves me into the bargain.”
