The title derives from the satirical Colonel Blimp comic strip by David Low, but the story is original.

Before a training exercise, he is "captured" in a Victorian Turkish bath by British Army troops led by Lieutenant "Spud" Wilson, who has struck pre-emptively.

Edith complains that a German man named Kaunitz is spreading anti-British propaganda regarding Britain's role in the conflict, and wants the British embassy to intervene.

The Germans insist he fight a duel with an officer chosen by drawing lots, which ends up being Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff.

While in France with his driver Murdoch, Clive meets nurse Barbara Wynne, who bears a striking resemblance to Edith.

Clive, restored to the active list as a major-general, is to give a BBC radio talk regarding the retreat from Dunkirk.

Clive again is retired, but, at Theo's and Angela's urging, turns his energy to the Home Guard, and his efforts in building this organisation win him national press attention.

He recalls that after being dressed down by his superior for causing the diplomatic incident, he declined the man's invitation to dinner, and often regretted doing so.

Frau von Kalteneck, a friend of Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff, was played by Roger Livesey's wife Ursula Jeans.

Filming was made difficult by the wartime shortages and by Churchill's objections leading to a ban on the production crew having access to any military personnel or equipment.

Michael Powell said of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp that it is ... a 100% British film but it's photographed by a Frenchman, it's written by a Hungarian, the musical score is by a German Jew, the director was English, the man who did the costumes was a Czech; in other words, it was the kind of film that I've always worked on with a mixed crew of every nationality, no frontiers of any kind.

The military adviser for the film was Lieutenant General Douglas Brownrigg (1886–1946), whose own career was rather similar to Wynne-Candy's, as he had served with distinction in the First World War, was retired after the Dunkirk evacuation, and then took a senior role in the Home Guard.

John Huntley highlights the use of jazz as background scoring for the sequence depicting a Home Guard operation in progress, during which 'Colonel Blimp' is captured while in a Turkish bath.

[21] The film was heavily attacked on release mainly because of its sympathetic presentation of a German officer, albeit an anti-Nazi one, who is more down-to-earth and realistic than the central British character.

Sympathetic German characters had appeared in the films of Powell and Pressburger, for example The Spy in Black and 49th Parallel, the latter of which was made during the war.

Pressburger, as affirmed by his grandson Kevin Macdonald on a Carlton Region 2 DVD featurette, considered Blimp the best of his and Powell's works.

Nearly 30 years later, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp underwent another restoration similar to that performed on The Red Shoes.

[26] The film is praised for its dazzling Technicolor cinematography, the performances by the lead actors as well as for transforming, in Roger Ebert's words, "a blustering, pigheaded caricature into one of the most loved of all movie characters".

"[28] Stephen Fry saw the film as addressing "what it means to be English", and praised it for the bravery of taking a "longer view of history" in 1943.