Without ever going to the trenches we view the darkening of the world from a surprising

Without ever going to the trenches, we view the darkening of the world from a surprising angle.”This approach gives free rein to Poliakoff’s “supra-realist” style. “He stands apart from events, yet has a certain wisdom about them. We view tectonic shifts in the world order through the prism of an innocent boy with a purity of vision. The child’s eye often perceives the absurdity of the grown-up world better than the adult’s. At one point, in the midst of the First World War, Queen Mary is distraught as it finally dawns on her that her family – whose tentacles span Europe – is about to disintegrate. She laments that “the Kaiser is being removed from his honorary position as head of certain British regiments”. “But surely that’s right, mama,” her clear-sighted son replies.

“We’re fighting him.”Poliakoff has always been a challenging, poetic film-maker who fiercely resists the temptation to state the bleeding obvious. Johnnie’s short life mirrored that traumatic era – he even died on the day that the Treaty of Versailles was being thrashed out.In Poliakoff’s epic drama, Johnnie is like the little boy who dared to point out that the emperor was not wearing any clothes He is not constrained by false notions of politesse. This convulsive conflict drove many of the rulers from power – including, of course, the King’s Russian cousin, Tsar Nicholas II. The trailers for The Lost Prince have emphasised as much, by picturing epochal events – Asquith (Frank Finlay), say, dashing to Buckingham Palace to discuss the impending war with the King – through a keyhole.Johnnie was born at the zenith of Edwardian splendour, when one family dominated most of the great houses of Europe. It was in the Duke of Windsor’s photo collection, which had just come into the public domain. The boy’s face was simply staring out of the page at me – I found that image very haunting.”What is so remarkable about John’s life, which stretched from 1905 to 1919, is that it encompasses such a cataclysmic period in our nation’s history – and the young prince, peeking through a half-open door, was witness to much of it.

“Years and years ago, when I was writing Clever Soldiers, a play about the First World War, I read one sentence in a general history book about Prince John. The idea lay dormant at the back of my mind until it was reactivated with a bang in 1998, when I saw a huge photo of Prince John on the front page of The Independent. Bearded, bespectacled, intense and charismatic, he recounts how the project started. Isolated and neglected by his family, he was redeemed only by the enduring love of a “surrogate mother”, his devoted nanny Lalla (Gina McKee).Poliakoff, the writer-director who has also been responsible for such memorable, award-winning TV dramas as Perfect Strangers, Shooting the Past and Caught on a Train, is taking a well-earned break from a concentrated editing session in a dingy bunker studio in Soho.

This newspaper played a key role in the creation of The Lost Prince, Stephen Poliakoff’s two-part drama for BBC 1 about Prince John (played by Matthew Thomas), the little-known fifth and youngest child of George V (played by the excellent Tom Hollander) and Queen Mary (Miranda Richardson, who gets to add to her portfolio of difficult monarchs).
The boy, known to his family as Johnnie, suffered from epilepsy and learning difficulties, and was thus locked away from public view in a remote cottage at Sandringham. They are not worth chasing again unless and until earnings upgrades start to come through, perhaps in the second half of this year For now, hold.. Because the shares, down a ha’penny to 63p yesterday, already trade on 18 times the forecast earnings for the year to February 2004, they look to have factored in all Mr Monro’s likely early successes. They are on an improving trend, thanks to better quality products, brighter stores and (it’s not rocket science, this) putting similar types of products on adjacent shelves.