Nolan got personal to summon his miracle of 'Dunkirk'

Dunkirk : History -- some of it intensely personal -- leant heavily on Christopher Nolan when he was making his wartime epic "Dunkirk", which rolls out in cinemas across the world from Wednesday.

The English-born director of the "Batman" movies had long dreamt of tackling the story of how a kind of victory was pulled from Britain's worst defeat of World War II.

With the cream of the British army trapped by a lightning German advance into northern France in May 1940, the country's new leader Winston Churchill was told they would be lucky to get 30,000 men out alive.

But in nine days more than 10 times that number of British, French and Canadian troops were evacuated in what became known as the "Miracle of Dunkirk".

Many were plucked from the beaches by a flotilla of "little ships" crewed by civilians who answered the call to cross the Channel.

Their courage came home to Nolan and his wife producer Emma Thomas when they crossed the same stretch of water in a small boat in what he described as "one of the most difficult and frankly dangerous experiences of my life."

"It drove home to us how heroic this was," Thomas told AFP. "And no one was shooting or dropping bombs on us."

"I grew up in a household where the war was very important," Nolan added.