I think you must be right. Of course being Owl's Dene you wouuld know! (On a tangent I have always wanted to call a house 'Owl's Dene', I wonder how many would realise the significance).
Again on a tangent, are you really in Cornwall? My mother was born in Cornwall, near Bodmin moor and her family lived in Devon. Missing the West Country terribly now in Singapore although lived in Oxfordshire and London. Just been reading Jamaica Inn which has made me miss it even more
. It is funny how you can be so emotionally attached to places because they are 'in your blood'.
. Otto Engler is the Austrian prisoner being held by the baddies. The old woman guardian is called Elsa but we never find out her husband's name. And Lucy-Ann reminds them of their grand-daughter (the suggestion is that she has been killed in the War.) All very moving as you said. As a child I was a bit hazy about exactly when the Second World War had begun and ended and I had an impression of the couple having guarded the caves for decades and grown old there, which added to the strange, somewhat spooky atmosphere!
I have absolutely no trouble picturing Nigel doing it, though! 
