Leslie Howard

Leslie Howard's career as a Hollywood star and his ambitions for the British film industry were well known. He contributed substantially to cinema history, having been featured in Gone With the Wind, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Pygmalion, and others. But, behind his charm was a perceptive and determined man. An ambivalent identity and a penetrating intelligence gave him the confidence to try to influence world opinion at the time of the Second World War. His work at that time is now almost unknown and startlingly unexpected. Howard made efforts to discover exactly what was happening in Nazi Germany and Austria, and what was intended. He struggled with the establishment back in England to get the British film industry restarted in 1940, and he aimed to use it to promote democratic values and unity. Howard worked secretly and alone to develop British propaganda in the US, and to help the SOE and the Free French in Britain. He became a well-loved figurehead in Britain's darkest days, and Churc