If it weren't for Lord Bonkers, I should have taken this as a charming portrait of an English backwater 70 years ago.
In reality, 1956 saw the height of the Isle of Wight Separatists' terror campaign and the film was made in an attempt to assure potential visitors that all was well there despite the headlines.
Nowhere in this film do we see the internment camps for suspected Separatist sympathisers, the occupying British Army or the desperate poverty caused by the collapse of the island's major industry of producing tourist souvenirs that incorporate several different colours of sand.
Yet is was not the British government that saw off the Separatists, but their own error in attempting to raise money for arms by muscling in on some of Violent Bonham Carter's legitimate business interests in the East End of London. It was Violent's manor and the were out of order – indeed getting lairy – as they were soon shown.
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