I suggested yesterday that The Narrow Road to the Deep North invites comparison with The Bridge on the River Kwai. David Lean’s 1957 film garnered no fewer than seven Oscars (in 1958), including best picture, best director and best actor (for Alec Guinness). To many, its whistled theme tune, the Colonel Bogey March, remains instantly recognizable. However, when the issue is what can be learnt from these fictional accounts of Japanese use of Allied POWs and Asian coolies to build the Bangkok to Rangoon railway, the advantage lies wholly with Flanagan’s novel.

It’s easy to see why Lean’s epic has a secure place as one of the greatest movies of all time – it’s a stirring World War II drama placed against a backdrop of Oriental exoticism. In dealing with a dark historical record, though, the film is largely nonsensical. It does make a decent start, with makeshift graves dotting the jungle railway shown as part of the opening credits, and early scenes focusing on the brutality of the POWs’ experience. Thereafter, though, the narrative focuses on a battle of wills between Japanese camp commander Colonel Saito and British camp leader Colonel Nicholson (played by Guinness). Nicholson not only wins, but then moves to direct efforts to build the bridge. In the process he both supplants Japanese engineers, and corrals Japanese troops. No more than a few hints of the suffering experienced by ordinary soldiers are ever given, and from start to finish the POWs present a picture of rugged good health. Asian coolies are nowhere to be seen.

When set against what actually happened in Thailand in 1942-43, none of this has any credibility. Flanagan has therefore performed an important service in correcting this aspect of Hollywood’s writing of modern history.