I also knew Jock Lewes' nephew quite well and, from what I know, the actors on screen are all speaking very much in character.' He can't see now and can't really hear, so I can't telephone him anymore, but he still has a razor-sharp brain. 'Mike is coming up for 103 and I saw him in July.

'Ben Macintyre and I sat next to each other at a party for Mike Sadler's 100th birthday and I still visit Mike once or twice a year,' she says. That includes crack-navigator Mike Sadler, played by Tom Glynn-Carney on TV, who transported the SAS originals across vast distances when he was part of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) before he left to join the SAS. Lorna says: 'The atmosphere Steven Knight has created is totally authentic, and I say that not only with the benefit of having had my father to talk to until he was 91, but I also talked to and interviewed all of the remaining originals while they were alive.' He was also the only original who kept a contemporaneous diary, which informed not only Lorna's biography of her father, Gentleman Jim, but countless other historical accounts of the SAS founders, including Ben Macintyre's book SAS Rogue Heroes on which the BBC series is based.

Lorna's father 'Gentleman' Jim Almonds - played on-screen by 29-year-old Corin Silva - was a key member of the early SAS and personally hand-built much of their basic parachute training equipment as well as jumping out of Jeeps at 30mph to practise parachute landings. Many were wary when the first episode painted SAS founders David Stirling and Blair 'Paddy' Mayne - played by Connor Swindells and Jack O'Connell respectively - as drunken mavericks, but, by the second episode, they were comfortable the series was telling the true story of the regiment's heroic exploits. Former Army captain Lorna told the Daily Express: 'I am not only in touch with the SAS but also with guys who have left the regiment and they are now calling it Khaki Blinders.They are really enjoying it.'

Rogue sas book