“That was surprisingly good, Nigel,” a heckler bellowed as the curtains closed on the history aficionado’s Great War documentary.
A packed cinema full of journalists, loyal allies and some rather critical friends had just watched the Reform UK leader’s much-anticipated 42-minute film.
Inspired by his own “Farage’s Forages” tours in the 1980s, the Clacton MP was beaming with delight at how his own staffers had found themselves engrossed in their personal family history.
“I find the individual stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things and finding themselves in remarkable positions,” Mr Farage said in the documentary’s opening sequence.
And those ordinary people are very much the stars of this film.
Mr Farage, who appears as an enthusiastic and occasionally mischievous tour guide, brings the forgotten men of the First World War back to life with a passion that is difficult to disguise.
But the Reform UK leader was ready to relax as guests arrived at a swanky Knightsbridge hotel for the first showing itself.
While journalists tucked into popcorn supplied at the doors, Mr Farage was enjoying a gin and tonic.
Among those attending were fellow Great War aficionado Lord Ashcroft, Made in Chelsea’s Olivia Bentley, and Reform UK MPs Danny Kruger and Andrew Rosindell.
But it was the documentary, rather than the glamorous guest list, which provided the evening’s real talking points.
For a politician whose career has been defined by confrontation, this is a rather different side to Mr Farage.
There are no political opponents to attack, no Brussels bureaucrats to blame and no rallying cry to deliver.
The Clacton MP was telling the stories of the men who fought and died in the Great War.
And, whether you agree with his politics or not, it is difficult to question his enthusiasm.
“I do actually care hugely about this country,” he said after the film ended.
“My motivations for policies are not about rank, title, position or ambition.
“I care about this country, its history, its heritage, its people, its sacrifice, all that we did.”
But viewers could not escape Mr Farage’s own style and humour.
The Reform UK leader, dressed in a quintessentially Farage touring outfit, made the audience roar with laughter after explaining that French soldiers had a daily two-litre wine allocation.
But Mr Farage’s visits to war graves across France and Belgium were also deeply personal.
He visited the site where his grandfather, Harry Farage, was wounded, paying his respects to the men who died in the same battle.
“For me, as somebody who’s cared about this stuff, and lectured on this stuff, and I still collect stuff, to me, it’s a big subject,” he said.
But it is not just his own family which has been drawn into the project. It is the psyche of the nation.
“There is not a single one of us with British heritage that has not got an extraordinary link to these events,” Mr Farage said.
Indeed, during the making of the documentary, members of his own team discovered extraordinary connections to the conflict.
Mr Farage revealed that one staff member’s great-grandfather was buried at Tyne Cot, while another uncovered two great-great-uncles who had been killed in the Great War.
It was a discovery which reinforced the documentary’s central message: these events are not some distant chapter belonging to politicians, generals or historians. They are woven into the family histories of millions of ordinary Britons.
Among the men whose stories particularly fascinate him was someone he was first introduced to at the age of ten at Dulwich College.
Stewart Walter Loudoun-Shand, who like Mr Farage was an Old Alleynian, was awarded the Victoria Cross for extraordinary bravery.
He was mortally wounded on the opening day of the Somme in July 1916 but continued encouraging his men despite his injuries.
Mr Farage also reflected on Valentine Strudwick, just 15 when he was killed in action, and Henry Webber, who died aged 68.
The film also explored difficult questions, including the 18,000 conscientious objectors imprisoned during the conflict.
Perhaps the most revealing moment comes when Mr Farage imagines himself as a 19-year-old second lieutenant.
He said: “Imagine, if I’d have been 19, a young second lieutenant, what on earth would I have done, how would I have coped, would I have been up to it? I don’t think you can come here without asking yourself that question.”
In a rare moment, the Reform UK leader’s eyes appear to well up as he considers the prospect, in a striking departure from the hard-hitting political operator who has graced television screens for almost three decades.
And there is perhaps a more personal reason why the prospect of death resonates with him.
Mr Farage has survived two serious brushes with death, including testicular cancer when he was just 21.
The second came on May 6, 2010, when the light aircraft he was travelling in crashed during his campaign to win the Buckingham constituency.
The plane, which was towing a UKIP election banner, came down at Hinton-in-the-Hedges airfield in Northamptonshire after the banner became entangled in its tail.
Mr Farage was pulled bloodied from the wreckage, suffering serious injuries including broken ribs, damage to his sternum and a chipped spine.
“I had five minutes of thinking what death was like, Mr Farage reflected. “Which most people don’t ever get.”
He recalled the progression from disbelief to fear as the aircraft came towards the ground.
“In my experience, it was, no, this can’t be happening. To, oh, f**k, it is happening. To God, I’m scared.”
It is an unusually candid reflection from a politician more accustomed to projecting confidence and defiance.
It would be wrong to equate his experience with the horrors endured by men in the trenches, but it offers an insight into why Mr Farage kept asking moral questions about fate, death and existence.
And Mr Farage was also keen to point out the sacrifice of men across the Empire, with memorials accommodating Muslim and Sikh troops from further afield.
He explained: “You have the Christian Cross of Sacrifice on everyone, but you also have this, and this is designed to be a religious symbol that would suit every religion.
“Even then, we were very conscious of soldiers who served from other parts of the Empire that would have been Muslim, would have been Sikh.”
Mr Farage added: “I’d like to think in some way this story could be used in modern Britain as a bit more of a unifier, that there is a collective sense of shared history.”
For a politician whose career has involved some of the fiercest arguments about British identity, it is an interesting interpretation of the country’s past.
There is, however, an inevitable political dimension to the way Mr Farage views that shared history.
For all his insistence that the documentary was non-political, Mr Farage could not resist drawing a connection with one of the defining arguments of his political career: Brexit.
In a speech that followed, the Reform UK leader returned to his long-held argument that the European project was built on a misunderstanding of Germany’s past.
“When Bismarck unites the Germans, what’s the first thing Bismarck does? Invades [France]. In 1914, Germany invades. In 1940, Germany invades.”
“And these are the foundations of the European Union,” he declared.
Mr Farage then recalled his discussions with former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, a fellow avid drinker, whose father had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht and seriously wounded on the Eastern Front.
He said: “One of the reasons that I opposed the European Union so vehemently as I did, right from the early days, was because they were developing what they believed to be a solution for a problem that no longer existed.”
It is a fascinating political detour, particularly given the documentary’s non-political insistence, but perhaps it explains why the history buff is the man he is today.
After all, Mr Farage spent years arguing that Britain should leave the European Union, even when it was unfashionable, and helped secure victory in 2016.
For the Reform UK leader, that result was clearly not simply about Britain’s relationship with Brussels. It was about national identity, sovereignty and the lessons of European history.
But perhaps that is precisely why the connection is so revealing about Mr Farage’s political instincts.
But perhaps the most interesting moment comes towards the end, with the story of Ed and Ted.
The two men, Mr Farage recalled, spent every evening drinking, arguing and giving each other abuse.
However, Mr Farage pointed out that they firmly believed their right to disagree with one another was precisely what they had fought for, and what their fathers had fought for in the previous war.
The anecdote, which in classic Farage fashion was set in a boozer, remains a powerful reminder of the freedoms we inherit today.
And the Reform UK leader revealed this is the start, not the end, of his journey into historical storytelling.
The Brexit stalwart wants to write a book about the so-called “Farage theory” when he hangs up his political boots.
Some of his critics believe that might come sooner rather than later, and the passion displayed on Thursday might do little to placate such speculation.
Mr Farage’s argument centres on how the Allies could have thwarted the rise of Adolf Hitler by continuing the fighting for another six weeks, echoing warnings he attributes to US General John Pershing.
His theory is that the Armistice came too early, allowing the German military to avoid the decisive defeat which might have prevented the later myth that its soldiers had never really been beaten.
He argues that this, combined with the punitive terms imposed at Versailles, helped create the conditions in which National Socialism could flourish.
But he is also acutely aware of the terrible human cost of the alternative, with British forces suffering around 1,000 deaths a day in the final weeks of the Great War.
He believes, however, that driving German forces back across the Rhine could have prevented the rise of Hitler, the Second World War and the deaths of as many as 100 million people.
It is an extraordinary price to contemplate after more than four years of slaughter.
Other uncomfortable topics are raised, too, including the treatment of soldiers shot at dawn after suffering from shell-shock and the imprisonment of thousands of conscientious objectors.
Ultimately, however, the documentary is about bringing people together.
Mr Farage is about to make his first appearance at the Cenotaph for Remembrance Sunday.
“I’ll be very honoured to represent the party at the Cenotaph on Sunday,” he said.
“And it’s something that will mean a lot to me personally. It really will.”
His absence in previous years has fuelled arguments about the political establishment, including from within Reform.
But this year appears to demonstrate Mr Farage’s pride rather than any political grievance.
“I’d like to think in some way this story could be used in modern Britain as a bit more of a unifier, that there is a collective sense of shared history,” he said.
And perhaps that is the most revealing insight of all.
Mr Farage has often been defined by what he wants Britain to change.
But this documentary is about what he believes Britain must never forget.
For a politician who has spent 35 years arguing about the country’s future, and warning about its decline, there is something rather revealing about seeing him so absorbed in the lives of those who shaped its past.
The message of his documentary is a powerful one.
It is about the remarkable stories of ordinary people who, through their courage, sacrifice and extraordinary deeds, gave us so much of what we have to be proud of today. They are the people whose lives shaped this country’s history, and whose stories deserve to be remembered by this country today.
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