The meaning and relevance of this film's 'Salting the Battlefield' title is that it is a reference to the malicious treatment of the ancient city of Carthage by the ancient Romans. Writer David Hare has said: ''After the Romans came and wiped you out and destroyed you and killed all your young men, they then threw salt on the battlefield so that your crops would never grow. So salting the battlefield means destroying utterly.
Of the shoot in Germany for this tele-movie, writer-director David Hare said: ''Germany was a very tough shoot because we were simply skipping from town to town and the story is of two people on the run so we basically shot it on the run. We were always working on German trains, and contrary to the myth, the German train system is
not the most efficient in the world. We would get on a train that was meant to be going to
Cologne and it would turn out to be going to Brussels or vice versa. I think it would be
true to say that the crew was stretched to the limit.''
In an interview, of the ubiquitous video surveillance in Britain not being the case in Germany, writer-director David Hare said: ''It's absolutely true. The people in Germany lived first of all through the Nazis and secondly through the Stasi - the East German secret service. So at this point in German history, they have rather strong views about individual rights, which would be wonderful if we had in England, but we don't.''
Bill Nighy once said of playing his MI5 spy character, "I'd play Johnny Worricker for the rest of my life! I'd be perfectly happy as long as they keep me in a good suit."
David Hare originally wrote the character of Johnny Worricker for Page Eight (2011) with Bill Nighy in mind.