Six Minutes to Midnight: Eddie Izzard hosts Q&A in Bexhill to promote new film

Izzard, who grew up in Bexhill, stars and co-wrote the film which tells the story of Augusta Victoria College, a large Victorian villa in Dorset Road, which once housed a Nazi finishing school where up to two dozen daughters of the Nazi regime were sent to improve their English. Students included the daughter of Adolf Hitler’s Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. On Monday, Izzard attended a special virtual question and answer session at the De La Warr Pavilion to help promote the new film. The Augusta Victoria School operated in Dorset Road and taught German girls throughout the 1930s and only closed at the outbreak of World War Two. The school was run on Nazi ideals throughout Hitler’s governance as demonstrated by the school badge, a Swastika on one side and a Union Jack on the other. Now with the benefit of research by Bexhill museum’s curator Julian Porter and museum volunteers, the museum’s patron, actor and comedian Eddie Izzard has co-written the screenplay for a fictional thriller film based on this remarkable episode. Izzard stars alongside Dame Judi Dench in Six Minutes to Midnight, which was released on Sky Cinema and NOW TV on March 26. It was due for cinema release last May but was postponed until September because of Covid. It was then decided it would go straight to TV and streaming services. In the film, Izzard and Dench both play fictional characters based on real teachers from the school. It tells a fictional story which sees Izzard’s character – teacher Thomas Miller – framed for murder, forcing him to go on the run to clear his name. Judi Dench plays the school’s headmistress Miss Rocholl.