Superb dramatisation which I watched on 4oD last night. Missed it when it was first broadcast. Jim Broadbent superb as the 'dotty peer' as the tabloids liked to dub him. I also liked Samantha Morton's understated Hindley. Never too sympathetic toward Hindley, the film did reveal her sometimes cold and calculating manipulation of those that did come into her dark prison world. Including Longford himself.

You have to hand it to Lord Longford. He didn't bow or buckle under intense political and media pressure. He stuck two glorious fingers up at his peers and the tabloids and carried on regardless. Hindley rejected him when she learned his high profile media presence was having a detrimental effect on her fight to win parole. A move that the film insists she later regretted.

There's little doubt that Hindley was in the end a political prisoner. No government was ever going to oversee her release.

The tabloids adored Hindley of course. She was their biggest star.

Longford's battle would always be in vain.

An excellent film, and for those of you who missed it I recommend you catch it on 4oD.

www.channel4.com/programmes/longford/4od#3053171

I hope this goes to DVD so I can see it.

There aren't too many "dotty peers" as you put it, left. Mores the pity.

The Fat Controller wrote:

You have to hand it to Lord Longford. He didn't bow or buckle under intense political and media pressure. He stuck two glorious fingers up at his peers and the tabloids and carried on regardless.

It's amazing what you can do when you are in the Lords - with no elections to face and no comebacks !

Oh, and the job (and the pay) are for life !!!

Had no idea you were in Australia veritas. I often wondered why your posts were tinged with happiness, rather than the gloom besieged messages from us still stranded here in the UK. As Basil Fawlty once said 'Happiness? Ah yes, I remember that.'

The Fat Controller wrote:
Had no idea you were in Australia veritas. I often wondered why your posts were tinged with happiness, rather than the gloom besieged messages from us still stranded here in the UK. As Basil Fawlty once said 'Happiness? Ah yes, I remember that.'

Oh I love Britain and there is so much I miss about it but it is becoming more and more expensive to visit.

There is one main reason I can no longer live there for long periods..I really do suffer badly from 'SAD'..seasonally adjusted depression. I simply cannot take endless grey skies before I think of topping myself.

Now as we go into winter which I love..the skies are usually a brighter blue than in summer.

It's that simple !