Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain

While related to a PBS documentary to appear on July 10 and 17, this chronicle of one of England's darkest hours manages to stand on its own, albeit with gaps. Its focus is the summer and fall of 1940, when France collapsed, America remained neutral and Britain stood alone. Aside from a slight American accent, the prevailing voice is British; continental perspectives, including German, are conspicuously absent. Clayton, a senior research fellow at Oxford's Worchester College, and Craig, the PBS show's producer, have drawn on the experiences of a hundred or so people who were there. About two dozen of the interview subjects are what might be called ""featured players"": soldiers, sailors, pilots and a few civilians whose stories recur and help hold the work together. Their comments seem to have been edited honestly--smoothed out rather than distorted to fit editorial needs or preconceptions. One result is a certain loss of spontaneity, but another is that the text paradoxically fits the ""stiff upper lip"" tradition perfectly. If not all the brethren were consistently valiant, the stories still come together in a master narrative of making do, muddling through and eventually seeing Hitler off. In an age all too inclined to discount such sentiment, it is good to be reminded that the British people in 1940 did see the war as worth fighting--and fighting at all costs. (July)