In his first class, Miller meets his wards. Many of the students are the daughters of the Nazi High Command sent to the British finishing school to learn deportment, to read and write English and to study Shakespeare. Rocholl asks him, “What sort of Englishman would accept a post teaching Herr Hitler’s League of German Girls?” Miller is actually an undercover British agent who has been sent to acquire information about Nazi collaborators at the school. He is greeted by the governess, Miss Eleanor Rocholl (played by Judi Dench) and has been hired to complete an urgent student presentation to members of the Anglo-German Fellowship. Each girl is wearing a white singlet with a small black and red swastika on it.Ī new English teacher, Thomas Miller (played by Izzard), arrives at the school to replace Mr Wheatley, who has disappeared. They perform disciplined fitness exercises under the direction of Ilse Keller. A row of svelte Aryan-looking girls, hair in braids, walk single-file down to the Bexhill beach. It’s August 15, 1939, and a voice-over announces that Germany has just invaded Poland. He insists that he can’t return to the school now-his small camera is missing-he has been “found out”. In a panic, he rides his bicycle to a public phone box to make a call. The story begins as Mr Wheatley, an English teacher at the Augusta-Victoria College for Girls, discovers that something valuable is missing from a locked box on his bookshelf. Six Minutes to Midnight tells the story, based on fact, of a British finishing school for the daughters and goddaughters of the Nazi elite, in the late 1930s, just before the outbreak of the Second World War. It is co-written by Goddard, Celyn Jones and Izzard and produced by Mad As Birds Films. It became the inspiration that led him to create his first screenplay, Six Minutes to Midnight (2020), for a film in which he plays the lead role.
Not surprisingly, this was the only English school badge Izzard had ever seen that incorporated a swastika in its design. When the British comedian Eddie Izzard visited the local museum in the town in which he was brought up, Bexhill, in the county of East Sussex, his attention was immediately drawn to a hand-embroidered azure, gules and white Augusta-Victoria College Bexhill-on-Sea school uniform crest, with a royal lion rampant, sporting golden crown and claws-and the British and Nazi flags side-by-side. As well as the good dinner, there was a chance to sing some rousing Nazi songs.- Alan Starr, Secret Bexhill-on-Sea It was the Führer’s birthday, and the school celebrated in style. Dinner was much better than usual, and the headmistress ran up a large swastika flag. On 20 April 1939, the girls had a special treat in store.
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