Nearly 70 years after his death on the battle front protecting works of art, the extraordinary and largely untold story of Ronald Balfour â?? a shy but extremely brave Cambridge academic who is honoured in Germany but forgotten in his own country â?? is beginning to emerge.
But with a major George Clooney film based on the work of a specialist unit devoted to saving art and heritage out next month, the few remaining people who have close links to one of Britain's least likely heroes fear that the true story of an unjustly overlooked champion of cultural history has been edited out in order to make good adventure cinema.
Ronald Edmund Balfour, a short-sighted, rake-thin medieval historian and fellow of King's College, Cambridge, was in his forties when he volunteered for a new unit comprising civilian art, museums and heritage experts set up to work alongside Allied forces after D-day. It was charged with saving paintings, statues, ancient buildings, historic documents and libraries from theft or destruction by the Nazis.
The unit, the monuments, fine arts and archives (MFAA) section of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, was dubbed "the Venus fixers" by battle-hardened troops bemused at being urged to respect cultural treasures.
The film The Monuments Men, directed and partly written by George Clooney, focuses on the adventures of a group of MFAA officers from after D-day until the end of the war. The film stars Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman and Cate Blanchett, is based on a book by US writer Robert Edsel and is due for UK release next month.
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