A Tayside inventor whose genius was at least partly responsible for Allied victory in the Battle of Britain will be the subject of a feature film next year.
Castles in the Sky is a BBC production based on the life of Sir Robert Watson-Watt, the Brechin man who invented radar and gave the RAF a crucial tool in its battle with the Luftwaffe in the second world war.
Noted character actor and comedian Eddie Izzard will play the lead role in the film, which is now being shot in Edinburgh.
It is hoped the production will help to give the inventor the same recognition expected for Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing after a dramatisation of his life, The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch, is released next year.
City of Brechin Civic Trust chairman Brian Mitchell revealed the group has donated £5,000 to the film.
He said: “Brechin Civic Trust sees the film as worthy recognition of the man deemed by many as the greatest Brechiner of the 20th Century, as well as bringing welcome publicity to the town.”
Former Brechiner Arabella Page-Croft is a co-producer on the film, produced by Black Camel Pictures of Glasgow with director Gillies MacKinnon, whose credits include Hideous Kinky with Kate Winslet and Regeneration with Johnny Lee Miller.
The news comes at a good time for Watson-Watt’s name, as his supporters celebrate his inclusion in the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame.
Planning permission has also been lodged for a plinth and area improvements around a statue in Brechin.
The bronze memorial to Watson-Watt has been completed by internationally-renowned sculptor Alan B Herriot and is in storage at an Edinburgh foundry, ahead of its siting in St Ninian’s Square as the Angus town’s first public statue.