You know it makes sense

Let’s not get too worked up if Guy Gibson’s dog ends up with a PC name

This week’s vexed columnar question: should Guy Gibson’s dog still be called Nigger in The Dam Busters remake? Some of you no doubt think you know already what my line will be. And it’s true that as a second world war enthusiast of the retired-blustering-colonel persuasion, I am indeed the sort of fellow who spits in his gin when filmmakers take liberties with the period.

When Steven Spielberg made out in Saving Private Ryan that the Americans won D-Day on their own, that was annoying. When the film U-571 told us that it was a US navy crew that first captured a German naval Enigma machine — when in fact it was British personnel from HMS Bulldog — that was more irksome still. At least Spielberg had the reasonable excuse that the Omaha landings were a largely American affair.