Pianist discovers footage of his father in lost film of Dunkirk evacuation

Pianist Peter Brown who discovered footage of his father during the Dunkirk evacuation Credit: ITV Border

A pianist from Grizedale was astonished to find footage of his father when viewing a lost film of the Dunkirk evacuation during the Second World War.

The film, showing men on board Royal Navy destroyer HMS Whitehall, had only recently been discovered in a library at the University of Manchester.

And the last thing Peter Brown expected was to spot his father, Dr James Brown, performing cartwheels and hitting golf balls off the deck.

Peter, who is the resident pianist at the Lakeside Hotel in Newby Bridge, has been searching for information on his father's ship for years and stumbled upon the footage during a routine internet search.

The Dunkirk evacuation in 1940 saw hundreds of military and civilian ships and boats of all sizes cross the English Channel to rescue around 300,000 British troops who'd been cut-off and surrounded by the advancing German army.

After the war Dr Brown worked as a GP in Cheshire and died in the 1980s at the age of 73.

The film, courtesy of the University of Manchester, can be viewed below.