Many of the central characters in SAS: Rogue Heroes are based on real people – including Stirling, the SAS’s founder, who realised that small groups of highly trained commandos could sabotage aircraft, runways and fuel depots behind German lines. There are various fictional elements and characters but Jock Lewes (Allen), Paddy Mayne (O’Connell) and David Stirling (Swindells) are the real founders of the SAS Is SAS: Rogue Heroes based on a true story? In the series he brings together what’s he describes as a “band of oddities, gentlemen and pirates”, and we follow this group of flawed but heroic young men as they do everything they can to help win the war.

Stirling’s unorthodox scheme risks upsetting top brass but, undaunted, he fights to recruit the toughest, boldest and brightest soldiers to join his unit. “I have an idea that might move the war in our favour.” His plan is to create a new kind of undercover parachute regiment, one that can drop behind enemy lines in the north Africa campaign.

“The Germans keep advancing while we fold our arms,” Stirling proclaims in one of the trailers for SAS: Rogue Heroes. At the centre of the story is David Stirling (Connor Swindells), an eccentric young military officer who becomes convinced that traditional commando units don’t work while hospitalised in Cairo in 1941. Set in north Africa during the Second World War II, it’s a dramatised account of the formation of the Special Air Service (SAS) – one of the most secretive units of the British military.

For the book, published in 2016, Ben Macintryre was granted access to previously secret SAS archives

Rogue heroes book