PROJECTS
A Question of Duty
'A Question of Duty' is a quietly powerful wartime drama that tells the untold story of Kay Summersby, the Irish driver and aide to General Dwight D. Eisenhower during the pivotal years of America’s involvement in World War II. As the chaos of global conflict unfolds around them, Kay finds herself navigating not just London’s blacked-out streets, but the delicate terrain of trust, loyalty, and emotional restraint within the highest circles of Allied command. Intelligent, capable, and emotionally grounded, Kay becomes more than just a driver, she becomes Eisenhower’s confidante, moral compass, and emotional anchor.
The film charts her quiet transformation from background figure to indispensable presence, all while war tests the lines between personal desire and professional duty. With atmospheric period detail, and referencing both 'Brief Encounter' and 'Casablanca', A Question of Duty is a moving portrait of quiet heroism, resilience, and the cost of connection in extraordinary times.
The University of Revolution
In the aftermath of the Irish Easter Rising of 1916, with Dublin city lying in ruins and the country in political turmoil, 1,800 young men are rounded up and interned in a concentration camp at Frongoch, north Wales. As the Irish peoples’ attitude towards independence shifts due to the barbaric treatment of the Rising’s leaders, a young Michael Collins organises the disparate Republican groups into one force as they fight the appalling conditions illegally imposed upon them, and the legal issue of their perverse conscription into the British Army. Following their eventual release from Frongoch, they return to their homeland to find much has changed.
'The University of Revolution' reveals how the Irish people properly embraced the idea of independence following the Easter Rising, and how the leaders of the independence movement began to prepare for it. It's about the birth of the Ireland we recognise today, and how the events portrayed led the Irish people to embrace their identity on a truly national scale for the first time.
Based on true events and using actual first-hand recollections from descendants of some participants in the Rising, 'The University of Revolution' is the first film to explore the little-known concentration camp at Frongoch, which the British originally constructed to house German prisoners of war during WWI. It subsequently came to be known as 'The University of Revolution' due to the grouping together of originally disparate factions looking to secure 'home rule' for Ireland, during a period when the British military resources were almost fully directed towards the efforts in mainland Europe. The period the Irish rebels spent interned at Frongoch is credited with being a fundamental aspect of the eventual victory Ireland secured in the battle for independence.
’88 The Second Summer of Love
'88 The Second Summer of Love is a sun-drenched neo-noir set between the underground clubs of late-80s London and the seductive ruin of pre-rave Ibiza. When Luke, a drifting early 'house music' DJ, hears rumours that Vince Delaney, a notorious London figure long thought dead, has reappeared, he’s pulled back into a life he thought he’d outgrown. What follows is a spiral of music, memory, and reckoning, set to the pulse of acid house and the crash of old power giving way to new culture. It's 'The Third Man' by way of 'Sexy Beast', with a beat that never quite lets you go.
’88 THE SECOND SUMMER OF LOVE is the story of Luke, an up-and-coming DJ who finds himself at the forefront of the house music explosion that drives these events, and what happens when his estranged, career-criminal father Vince Delaney suddenly dies. Soon after the funeral Vince's Marbella based business partner Donna informs Luke of the full extent of his inheritance, which includes Vince's recent plan to open a new nightclub on the 'White Isle' of Ibiza.
Reminiscent of 'Trainspotting' and 'La Femme Nikita', '88 is an absorbing, pulsating story examining the broader changes taking place in UK society as a whole, the events also tangling with the creation of the new market for ecstacy. As Luke reflects upon his relationship with the recently deceased Vince, his feelings for his father's former business partner Donna begins to interfere with his DJing career, leading to a dramatic finale on the White Isle.
A Question of Duty (the stage play)
Over the course of one evening, as the Second World War nears its conclusion, the Allied Forces leader General Dwight 'Ike' Eisenhower wrestles with duty, memory, and unspoken feelings with the people who know him best. Set aboard Eisenhower’s British command train in December 1944, A Question of Duty is a quietly devastating play about leadership, memory, and emotional restraint. Through a night of understated conversation, Eisenhower confronts personal history and moral weight with four visitors who each reflect a different side of his life: his driver turned permanent aide Kay Summersby, Albert the train’s Sergeant, and two senior British military staff. As whisky flows and the past re-emerges, the play explores what duty costs, not just in war, but in love, loyalty, and silence.
Through this production the little-known use of train 'Alive' as Eisenhower's top-secret mobile 'war room' is brought to the public's eye for the first time, a train on which D-Day was, in part, planned, and which was used by the Soviet forces' representatives as they negotiated the surrender of Germany.
Team Members
Gary Tippings
Beginning his production career at the BBC in the early 80s, Gary went on to work at C4 Television as a senior production assistant. Having spent most of the 1990s working on the other side of the camera as an actor and model, he also has some twenty-plus years of experience as a writer of novels and short stories. As well as a screenwriter and playwright, Gary is also the writer of the highly regarded sports biography 'The Stolen Title'.
Bringing all these elements together Gary incorporated Large Art Productions with a view to developing film, theatre, and television productions. He is the writer of the WWII drama/ love story 'A Question of Duty', and the historical Irish drama 'The University of Revolution '. Gary has recently completed the screenplay for a new project, 'Lapanka' (the Polish term for the 'rounding up' of civilians), a love story set in a slave labour camp in the Nazi controlled Germany of 1942. Gary is currently developing the stage play 'A Question of Duty', based on the feature film screenplay of the same name, focusing on the interplay of relationships between General Eisenhower, his driver Kay Summersby, and Albert Phillips, the British army sergeant assigned to his top secret train that was used as a 'mobile war room' for the duration of WW2.