Pressure film nerve centre house ''quite plush'

"It's really humbling just to be there and think of all those huge decisions being made, but then you've got the reality of the people participating on the front lines losing their lives."

The fate of the world hinged on decisions made at Southwick House near Portsmouth, which was the nerve centre of D-Day.

The events that unfolded at the Georgian manor house during World War Two have been dramatised in the film Pressure, starring Andrew Scott and Brendan Fraser.

According to Dr Robert James, senior lecturer in cultural and social history at the University of Portsmouth, it was the perfect location because it was strategically placed, secluded, and "very plush".

Pressure, which was released on Wednesday, focuses on the 72 hours leading up to D-Day.

Scott plays Group Captain James Stagg, a meteorologist who played a crucial advisory role when US General Dwight D Eisenhower, played by Fraser, chose to invade Normandy.

The invasion laid the foundations for the Allied victory in World War Two.

Brendan Fraser and Andrew Scott play US General Dwight D Eisenhower and Group Captain James Stagg in the film [PA]

More than a year in the planning, Operation Overlord, as the campaign was codenamed, was originally due to start on 5 June 1944 to make the most of calm seas, a full moon and low water at first light.

However, Stagg recommended a delay as storms had been forecast. Eisenhower then postponed the landings on the coast of northern France by 24 hours.

The filmmakers recreated the original map still up on the wall of Southwick House today [CANAL+]

Southwick House has remained an active military base and Pressure's filmmakers instead opted for Mentmore Towers in rural Buckinghamshire as their filming location, previously used in Batman Begins.

But James says visiting the Grade II-listed one-time Allied headquarters in Hampshire is "something quite special".

"There would have been a real hive of activity in there, really pressured, because of the decisions they were making," he explains.

"But then to see the map - you've got all these ships mapped out and their routes.

"On all of those there are loads and loads of service personnel, and they're all human beings, just like us, who would be fearful, as well as excited."

"You've got all these ships mapped out and their routes... and they're all human beings" Dr Robert James says [PA]

Southwick House was near to Portsmouth Dockyard, surrounded by forest, and linked by tunnel to a bunker at Fort Southwick.

"The fort was the headquarters where all the military commanders were planning," Dr James says.

"But all the information was then taken to Southwick House where you had the top brass."

He describes the house as "really quite posh".

"When you're inside, it's got the lovely balustrade stairs and lovely carvings," he recalls.

"I think they just thought 'where are we going to put Eisenhower and the other leaders? It's a nice place to house them'.

"Obviously strategically it had to be safe. It's secluded. It was close to Portsmouth, but not too close to be at risk of being targeted."

James says of the operation: "If it had gone wrong, who knows what sort of world we'd be living in now.

"It really did hinge on that being successful, which I suppose is why this film is making so much of the weather, because of course, if they hadn't have made the right decisions, it might not have been a success."

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