NEWLY-released film "The Winslow Boy" is more than just a scriptwriter's fantasy - it is based on a real family's fight for justice and recorded in the archives of Stonyhurst College.

Nigel Hawthorne stars in the film, based on Terence Rattigan's play, as the father willing to face financial ruin to clear the name of his son when he is accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order.

But the Winslow boy's real name was George Archer-Shee, a bank manager's son who first entered the Hodder preparatory school in 1906 aged 11 before joining the Ribble Valley college. AMY BINNS reports:

Although he got on well at the school, despite being teased for his initials, George Archer-Shee wanted to enter the Royal Navy and joined the Admiralty's Osborne college on the Isle of Wight as a naval cadet in 1908.

It was there that he was accused of stealing the postal order and, to his family's horror, was immediately expelled from the college in disgrace.

His father was determined to prove him innocent and took on the Admiralty in a famous legal battle that reached the King's Bench and was debated in Parliament.

Stonyhurst College, which had immediately taken him back as a pupil, sent representatives to witness to his good character during the trial, which he won. He was awarded £7,000 in damages and an apology from the First Lord of the Admiralty. In October 1910 the Stonyhurst Magazine reported: "The complete and public vindication of the character of George Archer-Shee is a matter of intense gratification to all of those who have known him at School. There was never any doubt here of his unblemished honesty and truthfulness."

George left the school two years later and joined a Wall Street firm in America, but there was no real happy ending for the family.

His father's health had suffered under the strain of the long legal battle and he collapsed and died in 1913 aged 66. George then joined the Army and was killed in the Great War in October 1914, aged only 19 and a half.

An officer serving with him wrote about his death in Ypres to his brother Major Martin Archer-Shee:

"He was in charge of a platoon in an exposed portion of the line; other units had received orders to retire but the order had not reached him. "Someone, it is said, pointed out to him that the units on each side of him were retiring; he replied that he did not care what they did but not one of his men was to retire till he gave them orders to do so. And so they held on against great odds.

"Later a message seems to have reached him, for he gave the order to the men to retire as best they could. He, it is said, was the last to retire and a man reported that he saw him lying face downwards on the ground, as though killed instantly, his head towards the enemy."

Recording his death, the Daily Mail wrote: "Driven from the Navy by injustice, Lieut Archer-Shee has won fame and honour in the Army, and he has served his country well."

His name can still be seen on the college's war memorial.

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