Sunday 18 November 2007
My Boy Jack [from Manchester Evening News]
JUST a reminder not to miss one of the TV dramas of the year tonight.
My Boy Jack will certainly be in the running when the awards are handed out.
In particular, David Haig as Rudyard Kipling and Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe as his son John – known as Jack.
“I certainly felt a lot in common with my character,” said Daniel at the Imperial War Museum screening this week.
David not only gives a superb performance as Kipling, he also wrote the drama.
“I’m more interested in the individual devastation a single loss in a war creates,” he explained.
“And the collateral damage to families, friends, relations, for generations to come.
“One single loss does that.
“On the morning of John’s death, 7,500 soldiers set off equal chain reactions, destruction within families.”
Kim Cattrall, who plays Jack’s mother Carrie, is a revelation for those who only know her through Sex And The City.
She says the story in the ITV1 drama, screened at 9pm, is just as relevant today as it was in 1915.
“I think the only thing that’s changed is that now young women are dying. It’s the sons and daughters.
“Unfortunately, we’ll never truly be rid of war.
“I think the most we can hope for is to continue to try and educate generations.”
Off screen, Kim has been trying to persuade an 18-year-old nephew not to sign up and serve in Iraq.
“And I have been anything but silent about it.”
Carey Mulligan, who plays Jack’s sister Elsie, says no acting was required for her scenes with Daniel.
“I had the exact same arguments with my brother about going to serve in Iraq last year.
“At the end of the day you’ve got to realise if someone is going to do something regardless, you’ve just got to love and support them as much as you can.
“Every time I switched the television on over the six months and saw images of Iraq, my heart stopped.
“The fear and the waiting, that’s what people can relate to.
“When I read the script, I could see exactly what David was getting at.
"I had been through it myself.
“The poems and the writing enhanced and articulated it in a different way, but the sentiment was the same.”
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My Boy Jack by Rudyard Kipling:
"HAVE you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind—
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!
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http://blogs.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/ianwylie/2007/11/my_boy_jack.html
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