This is John Batch, a conversation with Sir Max Hastings, the historian, writing of Sword Beach.

One of the two beaches assigned to the British Navy and Army during the landings at D-Day.

In this instance, its British commandos led by the very famous Lord Lovett, the Scots Laird,

who insisted on having his piper by his side as they marched forward

across the gunfire on Sword Beach and Inland.

Here Max explains, Lord Lovett, popular among his men, but more of this tonight.

I'm afraid I've said I made myself quite unpopular in some circles by saying,

Lord Lovett was the archetypal Scottish what we call in Britain or in Cockney Slang,

atop.

He was chief of Clan Fraser and he owned huge estatesates up in Scotland and he landed on D-Day

with his personal piper and he behaved throughout as if he was taking part in a 19th or

18th century battle. He treated the war as his sort of personal adventure. He'd been involved in one

and two commander raids, and he'd actually received a decoration for his part in the

commander raid on Dieppe back in 1942. But Lovett was unbelievably arrogant, as many aristocrats are.

And Lovett really regarded everybody, including Montgomery, as an idiot, except himself.

But the curious thing was, I mean, Britain in 1944 was getting ever more enthusiastic about socialism

and about the idea of a Labour government after the war.

And yet Lovett represented a past world.

He lived in this huge castle in Scotland in peacetime.

And you'd think that these men by that time would have hated his guts.

But they didn't.

They adored him.

...