In particular, their mentor comes off badly for profiting in career terms from his discovery of the group. But what's so bad about an intellectual taking a real interest in the talents of the masses and why should he not derive advantage from it? 

Projected screen messages (an over-used device at the best of times) inform us that the colliery closed, the Labour Party abandoned common ownership in its retreat from Clause Four and Ashington never became a New Jerusalem for the working class. It's such a daft grafting of modern left-wing gripes on to an uplifting story that it nearly made me cry — for all the wrong reasons.

When the invitation arrived to review Three Days in May at the Trafalgar Studios in London, an unconscionable attack of historical myopia made me assume this was a drama about the coalition negotiations of 2011. It turned out to be about something ever so slightly more important, featuring a different coalition.

The three days in question were between May 26 and 28, 1940, when Britain stood alone as Hitler's forces cut a swathe across Europe.

Ben Brown's spare treatment is set in the meetings of the five-strong war cabinet, forced by France's impending defeat to consider using Mussolini to sue for peace and avoid invasion.