The Western Isles / The Outer Hebrides - 1941 British Council Film Collection - CharlieDeanArchives

The sinking of the ’Atlantic Queen’ and the survival of its crew is supposedly based off a real series of events where the S.S. Richmond Castle was torpedoed in the Atlantic Ocean, and crewman Angus Murray led the survivors’ return to the UK in a lifeboat. Curiously, however, the sinking of the S.S. Richmond Castle occurred in August 1942, after The Western Isles was released. Severe bad weather hampered the initial filming of The Western Isles, and extra funding was required to account for this. In December 1941, the Ministry of Information stated that The Western Isles should not be distributed abroad, as it was counteractive to war effort. The Minister of Information, Brendan Bracken, personally wrote to the British Council, claiming that the film was “living proof of Goebbels’ statements that the British are frivolous, or that they are fighting the war to perpetuate a way of living long since outmoded, or that they have lost the intellectual, moral and industrial lead wh