Born 9 March 1917, in Windermere, Westmorland, in England, Watt was educated at the Dover County School for Boys and at St John's College, Cambridge, where he earned first-class honours in English.
Watt criticised both the book and the film for the liberties they took with the historical details of the prisoner of war experience and, more subtly, their refusal to acknowledge the moral complexities of the situation.
[1] A key element Watt explores is the decline in importance of the philosophy of classical antiquity, with its various strains of idealistic thought that viewed human experience as composed of universal Platonic "forms" with an innate perfection.
Such a view of life and philosophy dominated writers from ancient times to the Renaissance, resulting in classical poetic forms and genres with essentially flat plots and characters.
The importance of rationalist philosophers such as John Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, and many others who followed them, and the scientific, social and economic developments of this period, began to have ever greater impact.
In addition the specialisation of professions, which narrowed the everyday experiences of this new reading public, created a market for portrayals of a greater array of different classes, peoples, ages, sexes, etc.