The Virgin Soldiers (film)
1969 film by John Dexter
The Virgin Soldiers is a 1969 British war comedy-drama film directed by John Dexter and starring Lynn Redgrave, Hywel Bennett, Nigel Davenport, Nigel Patrick and Rachel Kempson. It is set in 1950, during the Malayan Emergency, and is based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Leslie Thomas.
In the film's 1977 sequel, Stand Up, Virgin Soldiers Nigel Davenport repeated his role as Sgt Driscoll.
Premise
Private Brigg is a soldier sent to Singapore during the Malayan Emergency along with a squad of naïve new recruits. There he falls for Phillipa Raskin, the daughter of the regimental sergeant major.
Cast
Lynn Redgrave as Phillipa Raskin
Hywel Bennett as Pte Brigg
Nigel Davenport as Sgt Driscoll
Nigel Patrick as R.S.M. Raskin
Rachel Kempson as Mrs. Raskin
Jack Shepherd as Sgt Wellbeloved
Michael Gwynn as Col Bromley-Pickering
Tsai Chin as Juicy Lucy
Christopher Timothy as Cpl Brook
Don Hawkins as Tasker
Geoffrey Hughes as Lantry
Roy Holder as Fenwick
Riggs O'Hara as Sinclair
Gregory Phillips as Foster
Peter Kelly as Sandy Jacobs
Mark Nicholl as Cutler
Alan Shatsman as Longley
Jonty Miller as Forsyth
Jolyon Jackley as Cpl Gravy Browning
Wayne Sleep as Villiers
Robert Bridges as Sgt Fred Organ
James Cosmo as Waller
Graham Crowden as medical officer
Dudley Jones as doctor
Matthew Guinness as Major Cusper
Naranjan Singh as sikh
F Yew as 'Hallelujah'
Brenda Bruce as nursing sister (uncredited)
Warren Clarke as soldier (uncredited)
Barbara Keogh as WRAC (uncredited)
James Marcus as soldier (uncredited)
Jeremy Roughton as soldier (uncredited)
A young and uncredited David Bowie appears briefly as a soldier escorted out from behind a bar.
Production
Film rights to the novel were bought by Carl Foreman, who had a production unit at Columbia. Foreman was busy making Mackenna's Gold so he assigned the job of producing to Ned Sherrin, with Leslie Gilliatt as co producer. Leslie Thomas wrote the first script but Sherrin felt it did not do justice to the novel so Joseph McGrath was hired.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Virgin Soldiers (film)” is 1969 film by John Dexter. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Virgin, Soldiers and film, not as a finished interpretation.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7772796. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1950, 1966 and 1977.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Virgin Soldiers (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.