It stars Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Wraysford and Clémence Poésy as Isabelle Azaire and was directed by Philip Martin based on a screenplay by Abi Morgan.

Stephen recalls these events when he is badly wounded as a result of an encounter with German sappers when he and his own men accompany the British tunnellers of the Royal Engineers underground.

Left for dead, he is discovered and saved by Jack Firebrace, a working-class man with whom Stephen has previously felt little empathy.

In 1916, Stephen is reunited with Isabelle as a result of a chance meeting with her sister Jeanne, shortly before his battalion goes "over the top" in the Battle of the Somme.

Working Title held the screen rights to the novel for many years, but were quoted as saying "there is something afoot" after Faulks' 2007 commission to write a new James Bond novel.