Monty Halls on Churchill's elite military academy

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]In a remote country house in Scotland during World War II, an extraordinary group of renegades and visionaries gathered to create a new type of fighter known now as the commandos. Writer and broadcaster Monty Halls tells the untold story of the force and the daring raids they undertook in his new book, Churchill's Killing House.

[00:00:20]So, you're a former Royal Marine Commando yourself. Is that why you wanted to write about Inverailort House up in the West Coast of Scotland and you know, the the start of the commandos?

[00:00:31]>> Yeah, yeah, you want to know where your DNA comes from, don't you? You want to know who your ancestors are and where it all began and particularly as an organization, the commandos, why we behave the way we do. Who set those standards and those protocols? And and if you ask any Royal Marine, any Commando, where it all started, they'll say Achnacarry. But Achnacarry started really in 1943 and before that, there was an academy set up. And the best way to describe it as an academy of death.

[00:01:02]You know, bad Hogwarts, basically. Where they got a group of eccentrics and outliers and renegades and put them together and said, "Right, let's figure out a new way to fight."

[00:01:12]>> Because they they had never been a fighting force like this before. I mean, they weren't playing by the rules.

[00:01:17]>> Uh no, they weren't and they were disruptors, actually. They were the sort of disruptors of the age. But one of the reasons it was essential is every time the British Army had stood and fought up to that point in World War II, they'd been roundly defeated and the end result of that was Dunkirk.

[00:01:33]And Churchill, amongst several others, thought, "Right, the only way we can fight back. We left all our heavy heavy weapons on the beaches of Dunkirk.

[00:01:42]Um everything we've tried hasn't worked.

[00:01:44]So, the only way we can be offensive and aggressive is sending small groups onto the continent to hit what they call the Atlantic Wall, hit the coast of the Atlantic. And for that, we We a a type of fighter."

[00:01:56]>> And they were all seen as a symbol of defiance in the aftermath of Dunkirk.

[00:02:01]>> Yes, and that's a really, really important point. Um, Churchill was always a a really sort of offensive spirit. You know, he had this real aggressive thing. You need to take the fight to the enemy, and that was one of the reasons that appeasement with Chamberlain before the war and in the lead-up to the war, it drove Churchill crazy. And Churchill had been a war correspondent in the Boer War and had been taken prisoner by the command the the Boer army. Small units of whom were known as commandos, and that stayed with him. So, he thought the way to do this is is get on the front foot, attack and survive. So, let's put this force together.

[00:02:39]>> And the training regime was brutal. And you when people talk about the Royal Marine Commandos now, that's what people think about.

[00:02:46]>> Yeah, and you know, the one thing they really wanted from people is the ability to endure, the ability to um, just sort of stick with it through any type of conditions and uh, against overwhelming odds and an implacable enemy. So, a lot of it was mindset, having the right mindset. But, they also wanted adaptable people who could evolve to the situation in front of them, work in really small groups.

[00:03:10]And they wanted flattened hierarchies as well because traditionally the way the British army had operated, you had your officer corps and then you had your other ranks. And they thought, "No, if we're going to work effectively in small teams, we need to flatten those hierarchies so everyone can make decisions about the best way to do things." And that model is the model for all special forces today. So, Inverailort House is basically where the DNA of all special forces today was laid down.

[00:03:35]>> And incredible bravery of of the the men that took part in these early raids.

[00:03:42]>> Yeah. And also and incredible characters. And you know, I could tell as I was reading the book that you know, you just thought they were they were just I could tell that you thought they were amazing. And David Niven was there. And there was, you know, it was so interesting.

[00:03:54]>> Yes. Yes. It became a sort of gathering point for the outliers, the eccentrics, the people who wanted to take the fight to the enemy, the people who were tired of waiting, and the people who didn't quite fit into a conventional army setup. So, you had Mad Mike Calvert, chap called Mad Mike Calvert. The mere fact he was called Mad Mike would indicate [laughter] that And he was in charge of demolitions, teaching people how to blow stuff up. You had Lord Lovat, described by Churchill as the most handsome man ever to scuttle a ship or slit a throat.

[00:04:23][laughter] And he was an aristocrat up there. He had 220,000 acres that he set aside to train. And he became The Royal Marines dress uniform nowadays is called Lovats, after Lord Lovat. You had two ex-Shanghai policemen called Fairbairn and Sykes, who taught unarmed combat.

[00:04:39]And a whole series You had a guy called Freddie Spencer Chapman, who was the the great explorer of his age and was said to be so good-looking that he rendered members of the opposite sex completely helpless in his presence.

[00:04:51]>> [laughter] >> So, you And David Niven, a film star, you know, who forged his sign-up papers to Sam Goldwyn in Hollywood and then came across and signed up.

[00:05:00]>> So, how significant would you say their contribution was to World War II?

[00:05:04]>> It became more and more significant. So, the initial attempts The one thing they didn't have was time. So, they had to just try and get on with it straight away. And their initial attempts were bungling. They were slapstick almost.

[00:05:16]>> Army, I thought, some of them.

[00:05:18]>> Yeah, it's a very good description because they thought, "Right, let's just get in some boats, go over there, and give it a go. How hard can it be?" And that was a disaster. So, um then they started to train properly. Then Inverailort House really got um up and running and they established a really good curriculum. They started producing commandos. They started producing what we would think of nowadays as the commando. And some of the raids they went on to do subsequently were to the Lofoten Islands in Norway, Vaagso in Norway, Saint-Nazaire, one of the most famous raids of World War II, Dieppe, they silenced the guns in Dieppe, became absolutely iconic and then of course D-Day. And Churchill said at the end of the war, "Nothing of which we have any knowledge or record can compare can compare to the daring and splendor of their feats of arms."

[00:06:04]>> Incredible. And the legacy lives on as you see in in the SAS now. And that particular type of warfare, is that still as relevant today as it was then?

[00:06:14]Or are we having a different kind of >> Yeah.

[00:06:17]>> wars that we're having?

[00:06:18]>> Yeah, it's more relevant now because the one thing we do know and you know the events we're seeing in Ukraine and these sort of mass movements of people and large maneuver warfare with armored vehicles, those those days are almost gone now. And the small groups of highly specialized, well-trained people. And you're absolutely right to say the SAS sprang from the house because it did.

[00:06:39]Both Sterling brothers went through the house. He set up the SAS, the SBS, the Paras. The Paras were formed from one of the Commando units for another iconic raid called the Bruneval raid. And the CIA was sending sending their people over there. The the Green Berets in America was sending people over. So, yeah, it all sprang from that one building on the west coast of Scotland.

[00:07:02]>> Oh well, that's a fascinating story and I I thoroughly enjoyed it. Monty, thanks very much indeed for joining us.

[00:07:07]>> My pleasure.