Whistle Down the Wind was originally a novel written by my mother, Mary Hayley Bell, about three children living on a farm in Sussex. The children – loosely based on my sister Juliet, my brother Jonathan and myself – discover a man in their barn. Thinking he’s Jesus, they decide to hide him and protect him from the adults because they don’t want the same thing to happen to him as before.
Dickie Attenborough thought it was a wonderful story, and convinced my parents it should be made into a film by the production company he’d set up with the actor and writer Bryan Forbes . After the original director, Guy Green , pulled out, Bryan took over at the 11th hour. He’d never directed before. When Dickie asked if he could do it, he apparently said: “I’ve no idea. We’ll soon find out!”
Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall were engaged as writers and made the brilliant decision to move the story to a remote part of Lancashire. The perfect location was found in the village of Downham, at the foot of Pendle Hill, famous for the witch hunts. Nearly all of the children in the film were local: the only experienced child actors were Roy Holder, who played Jackie, and me. I was 14 and a head and shoulders taller than most of the other kids. The sleeves on my coat were too short and my arms stuck out like a scarecrow’s.
Bryan really whacked me! It wasn’t until cameras stopped rolling that I cried
I’d just made two films in America for Disney. Shooting on a Lancashire farm in winter was very different: there was mud everywhere, and we often had to walk very carefully on duckboards. But I always loved filming in England. We’d be eating dripping, jam butties and fried eggs in a bun. Bryan was great at communicating what he wanted from the children without just getting them to parrot him. In the scene where the boy slaps me in the playground, the hand in the closeup was actually Bryan’s. He really whacked me! Kathy isn’t supposed to show that she’s been affected, so it wasn’t until cameras stopped rolling that I cried.
Arthur Ibbetson’s black and white cinematography wonderfully captured the stark, leafless trees and the mist blowing across the hills. It had a sort of film noir quality, and as a child I loved the night shoots. This was all beautifully complemented by Malcolm Arnold ’s poignant, nostalgic music. His arrangement of We Three Kings was a perfect fit for the kids’ tiny figures leaping like hares on the brow of the hill – and that’s Dickie himself whistling on the main theme.
I’ve always said Alan Barnes stole the show as my little brother, Charles. He was only seven. The first morning on location, there was a row of director’s chairs with the names of adult cast and crew members on them. He pointed at Alan Bates’s chair and said, “Ey up, they’ve spelled me name wrong.” By the next day, the props department had made a tiny chair just for him. One of his lines became the most quoted one from the film: “It isn’t Jesus. It’s just a fella.” He delivered it perfectly.
Diane Poole (nee Holgate), played Nan Bostock
I was 10 when Bryan and Richard visited my school. I didn’t know who they were. The head teacher just said two men would be coming to the playground to watch us play, but not to bother about it. Afterwards, a few of us were grouped together and told the men were looking for children to be in a film. When I told my mum, she said: “Don’t be so ridiculous and get your dinner eaten.” But the next day Richard Attenborough turned up at the front door. She was horrified as it was a Wednesday – and she wasn’t due to scrub the front step until Friday.
I remember doing a screen test up at the farm where a lot of the film was made. We just had to look round the end of a stone wall and say, “Is he coming?” without looking at the camera. I’d done school plays before and played Snow White, which involved learning quite a lot of dialogue, so this seemed easy.
Nan wasn’t the child who didn’t believe, and she wasn’t the one who was totally besotted. She kept the peace between the other two. I was probably a quiet child at home: I guess they saw that in my personality. Bryan kept some of our mistakes in the film, which helps make it feel more real. In one scene, I spell “Bible” wrong and in another I mispronounce “Christmas”.
In those days, us kids didn’t go to the cinema so I didn’t know who Hayley Mills was. She was like a real big sister, though, and we would act the goat together. It was only when we went to Pinewood to film scenes set inside the farmhouse that we started seeing what footage had been shot. It was a revelation. We thought: “Oh, this is what it’s all about.” They borrowed the actual back door from the real farmhouse to use on the set. My dad had a haulage firm and got one of his drivers to deliver it.
Alan Bates was very pleasant and softly spoken, so in the scene where he suddenly shouts at the “disciples”, we thought: “Oh crikey, what have we done?” At the London premiere, he came up and swung me around and I didn’t recognise him until he spoke, because he’d shaved his beard off. I got sent to Harrods to choose a dress for the London premiere, but I insisted on wearing the one my granny had bought me.
The scene I’m most proud of is when Kathy first tells Nan about Jesus being in the barn, while they’re in bed together. That was the last thing I did at Pinewood and by then I’d got used to it all. It was a long scene, but looking at it now I think: “Yeah, you did all right there, kid.”
• A new 35mm print of Whistle Down the Wind screens at the BFI Southbank, London, on 4 September, with a Q&A with Hayley Mills, Diane Poole and Alan Barnes. A BFI Film Classic book, Whistle Down the Wind, is published on 3 September
Dickie Attenborough thought it was a wonderful story, and convinced my parents it should be made into a film by the production company he’d set up with the actor and writer Bryan Forbes . After the original director, Guy Green , pulled out, Bryan took over at the 11th hour. He’d never directed before. When Dickie asked if he could do it, he apparently said: “I’ve no idea. We’ll soon find out!”
This report is published with credit to The Guardian. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on The Guardian →
Source: The Guardian · Interviews by Chris Broughton. Published 31 Aug 2026, 01:21 pm.
