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Kit Harington: ‘My grandfather was a Second World War spy’

Harington's grandfather John was in charge of what became one of the most controversial spying operations of the 20th century
Harington's grandfather John was in charge of what became one of the most controversial spying operations of the 20th century

There was a moment before production started on Kit Harington’s episode of My Grandparents’ War – Channel 4’s impressively starry documentary series in which celebrities investigate their ancestors’ Second World War exploits - when researchers contacted the actor to say that, while they will definitely look into both sides, they might focus a little more on his maternal set. They’d done some early homework, they said, and that side already seemed pretty interesting.

So it proved. Mick Catesby, Harington’s maternal grandfather and the man the Game of Thrones star is forever being told he resembles, was an officer in the Royal Artillery who was left mentally scarred for life by the Battle of Monte Cassino in Southern Italy in 1944. Meanwhile Mick’s wife, Pippa, who he married during the war, became a senior nurse in Exeter, forging a career she loved but would have to give up when the conflict ended.

But Harington urged the historians to not give up on the paternal side: “I said I think it’s really worth looking into my father’s parents, because I’ve heard some rumours, some… Chinese whispers… about what they’d been involved with. And the more they looked at that, the more interested they became, and we all became.”

Harington’s instinct about his paternal grandfather, John, resulted in what might just be the finest scoop in a celebrity-led genealogy programme since Danny Dyer discovered he was the 22 times great-grandson of King Edward III (“I think I’m gonna treat myself to a ruff”).

“There’s no other word for it really, he was a kind of spy - it was fascinating,” Harington says, via Zoom from his home in deepest Suffolk. Not just that, but John was in charge of what became one of the most controversial spying operations of the 20th century: keeping tabs on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, in case the former king, who had abdicated in 1936, was passing information to the Nazis. While he did that, John met and married Harington’s grandmother, Lavender, who had her own extraordinary war working as a codebreaker in Bermuda, the lesser-known “Bletchley of the Caribbean”.

Kit Harington and his mother Deb in My Grandparents War - Channel 4
Kit Harington and his mother Deb in My Grandparents War - Channel 4

Of the four, Harington only ever really knew Pippa, so he still sounds a little disbelieving as he talks about it. The Haringtons, including Kit’s father, Sir David, 15th Baronet, knew there might have been something secretive, potentially involving the Official Secrets Act, in John and Lavender’s wartime roles, and they never talked about those years, but nobody was expecting this.

“I never met either of them, so you just survive on stories,” he says.

John spent decades in the intelligence services, working in Bermuda until the end of the war, and crossed paths with everybody from double agent Kim Philby to Ian Fleming, whom he met in the Caribbean.

In the programme, it leads Harington to wonder, not unreasonably, whether James Bond is based on his debonair grandfather. John gave his grandson everything needed to take over Daniel Craig’s role, he jokes, except “the tall genes”. Harington is 5ft 7ins.

The very fact there was an operation to spy on the new King’s great-uncle was denied for decades, remaining a state secret until only a few years ago, when dossiers revealed the full extent of the operation. Rooms in the Bahamas, which the Duke of Windsor was sent to govern during the war were supposedly bugged, wires tapped, movements tracked - all to make sure that the Windsors, who famously had tea with Adolf Hitler in 1937, and made no secret of their pro-German leanings, didn’t leak anything.

Harington'€™s grandfather, John Harington. - Channel 4
Harington'€™s grandfather, John Harington. - Channel 4

“We couldn’t find out huge details about it, but we know he was spying on them,” Harington says. “I didn’t get the sense that he cared for or respected the specific royal he was tasked with looking over that much, so wouldn’t have minded reporting back on him.”

Harington is now 35, and a father himself – he and his wife, Rose Leslie, have an 18-month-old son. Harington and Leslie met on Game of Thrones: her character, Ygritte, took the virginity of Harington’s, Jon Snow, in a cave. Their baby arrived after a tumultuous few years.

Three years ago “Thrones”, as the cast knew it, ended after eight series. At around the same time, Harington checked into a £95,000 per month Privé-Swiss retreat in Connecticut to address addiction issues (“mainly alcohol”, he has said). Then came the pandemic, which killed and complicated work projects.

Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen and Kit Harington as Jon Snow in Game of Thrones - HBO
Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen and Kit Harington as Jon Snow in Game of Thrones - HBO

What we have now is a sober, content and more sensitive Harington, who moved from London to Suffolk this summer and is gladly navigating a life without Jon Snow, playing, among other characters, a Marvel superhero (Black Knight in last year’s Eternals), Henry V (at London’s Donmar Warehouse), another of his famous ancestors, Robert Catesby, the Catholic ringleader of the Gunpowder Plot (in BBC One’s Gunpowder), and will star alongside Meryl Streep in an upcoming climate-change anthology series, Extrapolations.

Doing My Grandparents’ War made him consider how different generations have coped with trauma and mental health.

“My grandparents’ generation were very closed off. I think we’re much better off being able to discuss those conflicts and discuss those feelings - it stops them getting bottled up and harming us.”

In the programme, he says he embodies the experiences “good and bad” of Mick, his maternal grandfather. “They’ve come through mum and landed on me. Those traumas, those joys of his life, live in me somewhere.”

“I do feel that,” he says now. “I’ve done a lot of projects about the world wars and I was fascinated by the war poets at school. There’s generational trauma handed down by both genders, but there’s something about these men that were sent off and saw such bloodshed and trauma and didn’t know how to deal with it, and then passed it on to their sons, and then to their sons. That’s where I am. It’s only two generations, and somewhere it lives in me.”

Harington and his wife and former co-star, Rose Leslie - Ian West/PA Wire
Harington and his wife and former co-star, Rose Leslie - Ian West/PA Wire

Therapists tend to talk about “breaking the chain” in such circumstances: the importance of identifying the inherited issue and making sure to avoid repeating the same mistakes. “Yes, and that’s partly one of my reasons for doing this.”

His own parents, though “the scar tissue lives in them”, raised him and his brother in Worcestershire in a, “really loving way, though they didn’t necessarily overtly say it all the time. And I think that may be something my generation is too guilty of. I find myself telling my boy that I love him all the time, and maybe I’m over-telling him. And that will maybe be our generation’s problem.”

The irony is that, as an actor, Harington has made a career from playing strong and silent types, from Albert in War Horse at the National Theatre in 2007 while he was still at drama school, to Jon Snow, whose tough and taciturn ways made him an icon of the Game of Thrones franchise – and earned Harington a reported salary of around £500,000 per episode by the end of the series.

“I don’t know why I end up playing characters like that. There’s obviously one I’m known for. But I think there might be something in looking back at my family and seeing how, in a very British way, I think, we haven’t opened up. And I don’t like it, which is probably why I find it interesting. But I did play one [strong-and-silent type] for a long time, so I don’t find them so interesting any more.”

But it’s also been reported – including by George RR Martin, the author on whose books Thrones is based, and former co-star Emilia Clarke – that Harington has devised and is planning to star in Snow, a Thrones spin-off about his old character.

I’m not allowed to ask about it in our interview, but have a go at clarifying: he doesn’t want to play “those” characters again?

“Maybe not, maybe not. I’m always attracted to the opposite of what people want me  to be now,” he says. “I jump at the chance to play something totally different from who you expect me to play... ”

The internet will make of that what it will. At the moment, Harington has a baby to attend to. He is a private man, who has never released the name of his son, and won’t even put his webcam on for a chat. So were his grandparents. But he wants us to know about their war.

“I think they'd hate it," he says, laughing. "But it's a really important show, this, as is anything that remembers those wars. We're only a hair trigger from something much worse."

My Grandparents’ War airs September 15 at 9pm on Channel 4