"Cottage to let" borrows heavily from the works of such popular British novelists of the 1930s as John Buchan,Dornford Yates and "Sapper".Kidnapped scientists,plucky schoolboys,cold -eyed detectives,dastardly German spies and pretty girls with summer dresses and wide-brimmed hats filled their pages.Now considered "Fascist",racist","imperialist"and probably several other "ists" I've never heard of,in more sensible times they were thought of as "good reads",nothing more,nothing less. In the movie the inventor of a secret bombsight is kidnapped by dastardly German spies and saved by the intervention of a plucky schoolboy and a cold - eyed detective. There is a splendidly Hitchcockian Auction scene where Mr John Mills as an injured RAF pilot picks up a warming pan by the handle and asks "What's this - a banjolele?"thus encapsulating in one word the whole era. Mr Alistair Sim is a sardonic Scottish detective,Miss Jeanne de Casalis (on the wireless as Mrs Shufflewick/Pennyfeather) splendidly dotty as the spooneristic posh lady. Young master George Cole is a role model for schoolboys carving Spitfires from bits of firewood during the blackout. Thoroughly enjoyable wartime entertainment at the expense of the dastardly Germans(sorry,our European partners - oops!I now await the midnight knock on the door)