I’m grateful to Peter Bradshaw for his review of Get Carter, which I wrote and directed (Michael Caine delivers in stone-cold crime classic, 25 May). It begins with a question: “Even after 50 years, do we properly get Carter?” Maybe I can help answer that.
In the late 1950s, I spent two years in compulsory national service. I found myself on the lower deck of a Royal Navy minesweeper in the UK’s Fishery Protection squadron. This brought me into contact with the fishing communities around these islands, in ports such as Grimsby, Hull, Lowestoft and North Shields, where I eventually set much of the film.
