Al Murray

That all feels precise and geometric and perfectly laid out.

Because it has to be because the whole thing, you know, that whole gun magazine thing turns with the turret.

You know, it's all one great big revolving mechanism as the tubes, the tubes with the hoists take the shells up to the up to the the into the turret itself.

And I thought I thought the other thing that I was really struck by.

So we stood on where the walrus, the shag bat catapult would be.

And the other, you know, the thing I was really struck by these ships is because they're made of steel, you want to change it.

You cut a piece off, you take the arc light to it and you cut the bit of the ship off you don't want anymore.

And yes, you weld another bit on.

And the sort of way that actually these ships are temporary...

They might appear to be permanent, but they're temporary evolving structures.

And in that sense, they're like just if we go back to the country house analogy, you know, someone stuck a conservatory on and then they took the conservatory off.

You know, you know what I mean?

If you think of it like that, it starts to change your understanding of it.

And we looked at a lot of footage.

While we were there, we were looking at a lot of incredible IWM footage.

And how shagged the ships look when they're turning up, for instance, at Sydney, having sailed all the way across the world.

How shagged the ships look from being back.

Because, you know, they're not cruise liners.

If the weather's awful, they'll stop.

They've got to push on.