Hubert was a P.O.W. taken captive by Japanese forces in 1942.  Over a period of about 3 years, he was transferred from prison camp to prison camp across southeast Asia. They had to endure horrific conditions, including torture, and in 1943 he contracted malaria, which resulted in hallucinations and bone-breaking cramps.

I found it to be a strange idea that with all that was going on that he would write a cookbook. Amongst the horrors he found comfort in the most ordinary of things: Cooking.  One of the home comforts he wouldn’t see for three years and was increasingly unlikely to ever see again as he got more and more sick.

I decided to tell this story of longing by intercutting scenes of a hallucinated cookery show. This was primarily a way of telling the story visually and demonstrating specifically where Hubert’s mind was going.  It was also a fun device to try and portray his slipping grip of reality.

Obviously it’s a story about literal hunger, but it’s also about the hunger for home comforts. It’s a hunger for what you’ve left behind or what you cannot reach. Whether it’s sitting in the garden with your brother, or a hunger for a life without rations, or a hunger for peace. What Hubert and his fellow prisoners endured was a pretty horrific experience and the most they could dream of was just a return to the status quo we take for granted every day.

I did. It was an extraordinary thing actually. The cookery book was something of a legend in my family and there was always rumour that my uncle might have had a copy or a transcription of some sort.

However, when I was researching the film I literally just entered my Uncle’s name into the computers at the Imperial War Museum and the cookbook popped up. It was in a box containing notes and other documents written by POWs from his camp. Apparently Hubert himself had given the book to a friend who had then donated it to the IWM. I kind of wanted to write a whole series of shorts based upon those documents.

I spent a lot of time reading books and prisoner of war accounts and listening to recorded interviews at the Imperial War Museum. I learned some of the horrific things that were being done.  So I can now tell you the difference between water-boarding or water-torture or water-treatment; all of which are terrible things to do to the human body but all of which were detailed in pages and pages of chilling notes, interviews and books.

It struck a chord with me just because writing a cookery book was such a unique way to deal with the trauma. He ended up with terrible survivor’s guilt and post traumatic stress disorder. Although he was never subjected to anything more than a beating, he was forced to watch his men be tortured in grotesque ways.

Of the documents in this box at the Imperial War Museum, one was a novel a soldier had written about his sweetheart. He’d written a love letter to her that was an entire biography of their relationship. But Hubert didn’t go that way. He decided to write about what he enjoyed doing when he was at home, and that was cooking.  He never really wrote about himself. He only ever wrote the cookbook.  And that was very intriguing.

Comedy, is a surprising one.  I think if you are going to have something as dramatic as torture being retold it has to contrast with something less horrifying. You have to set up a sort of base level of comfort.

What’s more, the documents I found had lots of references to people trying to make each other laugh – specifically Hubert. There was one particular account of him making the entire camp laugh retelling how the prison camp’s dentist insisted on removing one of Hubert’s teeth with a rusty pair of pliers. Hubert ended up being chased all around the medic’s station.  There was a lot of emphasis on that and so I wanted to be able to add that element into his character.

I spoke to relatives. He was a significant part of my family tree in a way. Everyone knew what he had been through and I don’t think he ever fully recovered. He spent a lot of time with my aunt and obviously with my grandparents and hearing about him was fascinating, but without that, he’s actually very well documented in the Imperial War Museum.

A soldier called Claude Richards published a book called the Fatal Flag, which covers his experience of the war and Hubert pops up regularly.  It seems Richards would often go to Hubert for comfort or solace. In many ways he reminded me very much of my Uncle Jamie in the fact that he had a very good sense of humour and would often be the one to perk everyone up. If Richards was feeling down they’d go walking through the garden and Hubert would lift his spirits a little bit. That’s something I very much recognised in my family. So in a way the character of Hubert in Recipe is an amalgam of these documented accounts and a little inspiration from various members of that side of my family.

I think we all know how it feels to be homesick and I think that’s what the film is really about in a way. It’s about a hunger for home and home comforts.

I think anyone that has siblings will grasp the idea that Hubert’s missing his brother.  The amazing twist in the actual true story is that it was his own brother discovered him in a camp.  My Great Grandfather accepted the surrender of the Japanese forces in South East Asia and then liberated the P.O.W.s.

That’s one of the main messages of the story: “don’t let the b**s***ds grind you down”. It’s actually a bit of a non-phrase in Latin but the whole camp took it to mean that. The camps were filled with British, American, Canadian and Australian forces, but it was one motto they could all unite under. I thought it was just a charming little quirk; a way of perking everyone up as they went along.

I did actually. I cooked the three recipes that are now in the screenplay. I cooked the tomato soup from scratch which was delicious. I cooked the lamb recipe, though I had to make some small adjustments to just to update it a little. Then I cooked the creme caramel with which I ruined some of my finest pots and pans. But I gave it a good shot anyway!

They’re very happy that such an extraordinary story is being told, particularly when you consider the fact that he was rescued by his own brother. There’s a real narrative tying-up of loose ends and it’s wonderful because it is both extraordinary and true.

Darren Aronofsky’s film Requiem for a Dream is a big influence.  Aronofsky films things very sensually and I wanted to get that sense across because I didn’t want to talk overtly about the torture and deprivation. I wanted to tell that story sensually and visually.

I also watched all the old P.O.W. films when I was researching this: The Great Escape, Bridge Over The River Kwai.  In fact, the real-life senior officer at the camp depicted in The Bridge Over The River Kwai was Col. Philip Toosey, one of Hubert’s subordinates and closest friends.  Although they weren’t in the same camp, Hubert’s P.O.W. experience was very much like that in the first half of film, at least to begin with, so it had a big influence on the way Hubert behaves.

And in terms of the in-studio dialogue, I listened to a lot of classic radio and variety recordings.  There’s probably more than a little Flanders and Swann in Hubert’s diction, I think.

What I would like is for the film to be produced by someone with a visual eye and a knack for finding pathos in simple things. I think the challenge would be in bringing to life the delirium in a visual way.

I tried to keep the idea simple enough that it could be filmed in two or three locations on a modest budget. The TV studio is probably the biggest logistical challenge but with the cell and torture room I tried to make sure both the environment and the torture itself was relatively obscured.

The other reason for this is that I didn’t want it to become torture porn; I didn’t want this to become the 1945 version of Saw. It was important to me this was a story about a person, not torture and especially not the torturers. I think that was a challenge – trying to keep the spirit of the story focused on the subject and not turning it into anything sensationalist.

Having said that, a larger budget would probably be able to do some fantastic work with the visual aesthetic, but I’d just be happy to have it produced by someone with a passion for this remarkable story. It would just be a pleasure for me and my family to see the story brought to more people.”