Daniel's journey of remembrance

HARRY Potter star Daniel Radcliffe is wearing his poppy with pride in remembrance of a young man killed almost a century ago.

He takes on a very different role in My Boy Jack (ITV1, Sunday, 9pm), his first major TV drama since achieving global fame in the Potter films.

Set during the First World War, it tells the true story of how Rudyard Kipling used his influence to get his 17-year-old son Jack a commission with the Irish Guards, despite his son's poor eyesight.

Jack, caught up in the euphoria of the time, was every bit as keen to do his duty in northern France, and made the ultimate sacrifice.

He went missing in action during the Battle of Loos in Sept 1915. It was eventually learned that he had been killed in the pouring rain, unable to see a thing, shot down the day after his 18th birthday.

Daniel, also 18, says he hopes Potter fans will be watching when the moving two-hour film is screened on Remembrance Sunday.

Sitting at the Imperial War Museum, in London, I asked him what he thought they might take away from watching it. "I just hope that they're moved and that it sticks with them. To me the thought of forgetting all the people that fought is terrible. It is quite upsetting.

"I feel that we need to make the effort to remember them and realise how lucky we are to not ever have to endure those conditions again. And, if people watch it, who might not have watched it otherwise, then fantastic."

The film is written by David Haig, who also plays celebrated author and poet Kipling, a superstar of his day, author of The Jungle Books and Just So stories, as well as poems, including If. Sex And The City actress Kim Cattrall is Kipling's wife, Caroline, with Carey Mulligan as Jack's sister Elsie. The TV drama is based on David's own stage play version of the story.

It has been a labour of love for him, ever since a co-star on stage mentioned his striking resemblance to Kipling. "It's a dream that has taken 22 years to realise," explains David.

"Ultimately, what I find most moving about war is not necessarily the rights and wrongs, but the fact that every single casualty is an entire family devastated forever.

20,000 men

"The chain reaction of a single death in Iraq is huge, and yet in this particular war we're talking about sometimes 20,000 men in one day.

"Rudyard never lost his faith in the rightness of the war but what he couldn't bear was the thought that the country let those boys who fought down. After the war, he wrote a two-line phrase, through the eyes of the sons who died, which is, `If any question why we died, tell them our fathers lied.'"

Daniel says: "I don't think you can help but feel parallels when you realise that boys of Jack's age are still going to war. I think the film will have resonance for that reason.

"But the tragedy isn't just about the war, it's the idea of the parents outliving the children, which is the greatest tragedy imaginable.

"The story was the first thing that attracted me to this project. It's beautifully written. I've also had a relatively long-running fascination with the First World War.

"All war is, to a certain extent, beyond anyone's imagination, but particularly what it must have felt like to be in the trenches. These were probably some of the worst conditions any human has had to deal with. You feel compelled to learn about it so that the people who went through it don't just fade away into the past."

Daniel has been making Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, the sixth movie, to be released next year.

He's also "incredibly excited" about reprising his West End role in Equus on the Broadway stage next September. And My Boy Jack certainly shows there's life after the boy wizard for Daniel.

On the last day of the production, he filmed the scene where Jack leaves home to go to war. It was shot at Kipling's former home - Bateman's in Sussex - on what would have been Jack's 110th birthday.

"To be filming that scene on the day he was born was amazing. What was more significant was to do what would have been the same walk Jack did up the same pathway to leave for war.

"In the archway of the door of the house, Jack had inscribed his initials and every time I walked out of the door to do a take, I walked right past them. That was a particularly moving moment for me. To see those initials was so sad and poignant, especially knowing what we know now. It was incredibly moving."