STEWART Binns’ grandad was a gunner in the Royal Artillery and an Accrington Pal.

He won the Military Medal in 1917 for acts of gallantry and devotion to duty under fire.

Not that he ever shared that information with his devoted grandson. He was far too modest.

In fact, John Tommy Binns, a former Burnley Cricket Club player, died when Stewart was nine.

The young tearaway was broken-hearted, for “Daddy Jack” had played the part of substitute father when his Catholic mother, a nurse, became pregnant and the identity of his father was never revealed.

“He was younger and attached, I believe. But it was a great source of shame to my mother.”

She gave birth in Lancaster, then moved to Burnley with her new baby, and the subject was never raised again.

Stewart, 64, who went to the former St Theodore’s School in the town, knew Daddy Jack had war medals, but more significant in the young boy’s mind was the beautiful silver trophy he received when Burnley won the Lancashire League title in 1908 and he claimed six wickets for two runs against Church.

“He was a local legend,” says Stewart. “He went on to play professionally for Oldham and then became a club steward. His reputation attracted the drinkers into the club.”

That club was Keighley Green Working Men’s Club, Burnley, which features significantly in Stewart’s book of fact-based fiction The Shadow of War (Penguin Books), the first in a series which will see a book for each year of the First World War.

“I used to go to the club with my grandad and I was allowed to play with the balls in the snooker hall. It was there I heard the Lancashire accent in its purest form when he was speaking in the old dialect with his mates.”

In his book Stewart explains: “Many of the characters speak in their local vernacular, especially the old Pennine dialect of North-East Lancashire, largely gone now, it was still spoken into the 1960s and I remember well its unique colour and warmth. It was an unusual combination of Old English and the 19th century ‘Mee-Maw’ — the exaggerated, mouthed reinforcements of speech used to overcome the noise of the looms in the cotton mills — made famous by comic actors such as Hylda Baker and Les Dawson.”

In fact Stewart, who has travelled all over the world and lived away since leaving home for Lancaster University at 18, still retains a slight twang —not that a Lancastrian would notice.

“I’m a huge Burnley FC fan. Sean Dyche is a hero. On one of my trips to see Burnley play Luton I stopped off at The Swan in St James’s Street, which was full of Burnley supporters. I ordered a drink and the landlord took me to one side and told me that they didn’t take kindly to Luton supporters in there. It’s funny because all the time I’ve lived away I’ve been asked ‘how are your whippets?’ One thing I refuse to do is round my vowels. I won’t ever say ‘baaaath’, even though my wife and kids do.”

Stewart has enjoyed a phenomenal, multi-facted career. He started as an academic, moved into teaching history, English and games in comprehensive schools and even had a stint as a soldier. That would be enough for even the most ambitious, but this master of re-invention turned his talents to documentary-making and finally writing.

His TV credits include the hugely popular ‘In-Colour’ genre of historical documentaries, notably the BAFTA and Grierson winner Britain at War in Colour and the Peabody winner The Second World War in Colour.

As a documentary maker in the ’90s, Stewart was privileged to film the Remembrance Day Ceremony at the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium.

“It was one of the most moving experiences imaginable,” he says. While there, he met Bill Stone, Harry Patch and Henry Allingham, the last British survivors of the war.

He also launched Trans World Sport in 1987, Futbol Mundial in 1993, the International Olympic Committee Camera of Record in 1994 and the Olympic Television Archive Bureau in 1996.

His TV career kicked off as a result of a friendship with Cliff Morgan, Welsh Rugby Union player and BBC programme maker and executive.

“I was teaching at the time and feeling very restless. I was destined for a senior headship, but I didn’t want to do that for the next 25 years. I wanted to see what else I could do. I wrote a treatment for the BBC on the definitive history of sport.”

He went out for a drink with his mate Cliff in the BBC bar. A week later George Carey, founder of Newsnight, got in touch telling him that Bill Wyatt, the BBC’s chief executive, had asked him to put that very idea in motion. “I almost fell through the floor,” said Stewart, who now runs Big Ape Media International with his wife Lucy.

Stewart wants people from all walks of life to identify with his book, which is told through the voices of men and women of different social classes.

“The Accrington Pals officers were middle class public schoolboys. They were Etonians and real toffs and they were all mixing with working class soldiers. Those classes had never mixed before and it was one of the silver linings of the war. It was not all horror. My grandad survived. He had never left England before and it was the greatest adventure of his life.”

The Shadow of War is available in hardback and in paperback from October.

Fellow Burnley fan Alistair Campbell says of it: “Stewart Binns has produced a real page-turner, a truly stunning adventure story.”