History

  • World War Two was the war in which old gender rules changed, as intelligence agencies created specific training and roles for women. SHADOW WARRIORS is the story of women as undercover combatants: armed with Sten guns and grenades; cutting telecommunication wires, laying mines in roadways; organizing bombing raids; preparing the way for the D-Day invasion…

    Read more →

  • The accidental explorer

    Perce Blackborow is one of the most fascinating Antarctic explorers. An accidental hero. A stowaway who became a key part one of the great stories of survival… “If anyone has to be eaten, then you will be the first!” the expedition leader said. The words might have been a dark joke but, with what was about…

    Read more →

  • The last veterans

    As time passes we have to grab every opportunity to meet veterans of World War 2. Now, even those who only came of age towards the end of the conflict – from D-Day to VE day – are at least 98 years old. This week I went to a special event with almost a dozen…

    Read more →

  • D-Day veteran Ted Owens is celebrating winning a Gold award at the New York Festival of TV and Film. The series LEST WE FORGET in which two schoolchildren travelled to France, the Netherlands and Germany with Ted was given the special prize in a documentary category. The Royal Marine Commando was hit by a shell on…

    Read more →

  • In the summer of 1978 two former members of a B-17 crew met to discuss their escape from death in a raid on Kassel in Germany in 1943. Sitting on a porch in Tarrytown, New York, co-pilot Bohn Fawkes turned to his navigator Elmer “Benny” Bendiner and said: “You remember that we were hit with…

    Read more →

  • Catch up on last night’s opening episode of #LestWeForget when you can. Next week opens on a poignant note the morning after #DDay75.https://t.co/ZJYXyOXU7z — Greg Lewis (@gregjlewis) September 19, 2019

    Read more →

  • Artillery Wood Two military graves lying only feet apart in a Belgian cemetery commemorate the lives of two iconic literary figures: the greatest Welsh and the greatest Irish poets of the Great War. They died on the same day (102 years ago today) in the same battle, but the paths that led them into British…

    Read more →

  • Just back from an amazing adventure with my friend, Ted Owens – a veteran of 41 Royal Marine Commando who landed on Sword Beach early on the morning of June 6, 1944. Together with my children, Evan and Caoimhe, I’ve been following Ted’s wartime footsteps for a new television series. The kids have been learning…

    Read more →

  • Finally getting a chance to round up some of the reviews and responses to Defying Hitler. USA Today made it one of their Five Books Not To Miss, noting that Publishers Weekly says the book is “an informative counterpoint to accounts of widespread German complicity with the Holocaust.” And the New York Post marked it as one…

    Read more →

  • On March 28, 1942 more than 600 men left Falmouth in Cornwall in a flotilla of three destroyers and 16 smaller boats. The special fleet included HMS Campbeltown which was packed with explosives and was to be used to ram into the gates of the docks of the French port of St Nazaire. St Nazaire was…

    Read more →