Words Lee Curtis

At almost ninety, nobody expected Bernard Jordan to make headlines around the world, least of all the man himself. But in the summer of 2014, he did just that.

After one of his usual walks on the seafront with his wife Rene, Bernie reveals his wish to travel to Normandy for the seventieth anniversary of the D-Day landings only to be denied by care home staff. In the true spirit of the Greatest Generation, Bernie keeps calm and carries on with his plan – staging a "great escape" from the care home, with his war medals hidden beneath his coat, and boarding a ferry to France.

From the BAFTA-nominated director of An Ideal Husband and Dad’s Army and the BAFTA-nominated writer of Made In Dagenham, the film explores the story behind the headlines, showing Bernie and Rene fall in love during the war and how that love endures through sixty years of marriage.

The Great Escaper is also a moving memorial to Caine’s co-star, the late Glenda Jackson. Sharing the screen for the first time together in almost fifty years, the two-time Academy Award-winning legends are a perfect match as husband and wife in this celebration of long-lasting love.

I Would Walk...

500 miles - Harold Fry, The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry

Harold Fry embarks on an extraordinary journey to hand-deliver a message to a dying friend, walking all the way from his home in Kingsbridge in Devon to her hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed.

850 miles - Tom Harper, The Last Bus

After the death of his wife, Timothy Spall's pensioner uses his bus pass to travel the length of the United Kingdom - from John O'Groats to Land's End - to scatter her ashes near their childhood home.

375 miles - Bernard Jordan, The Great Escaper

From a car home in Hove - via taxi and ferry - to Normandy beach, Bernie's forty-eight-hour adventure to pay his respects to his fallen comrades on the seventieth anniversary of the D-Day landings captured the imagination of the world.