THE WEEK WE WENT TO WAR
Series Producer | Narrator
Magazine | Daytime | History
Forces sweetheart Katherine Jenkins is joined by Michael Aspel to celebrate the heroes of the Home Front in a special week of programmes to commemorate the week 70 years ago that Britain went to war with Nazi Germany.
Also, antiques expert Tim Wonnacott searches for the everyday wartime objects that have become collectables.
The Week we Went to War
Series producer and narrator
5 x 45’ magazine series with Finestripe Productions for BBC1 daytime. The series delivered one of the best ever factual audiences for the slot
Episode 1
On January 20, 1943, a German plane dropped a bomb on a south London school in broad daylight, killing 38 children and six teachers. The programme talks to some of the survivors and pays tribute to the ordinary men and women who helped save their lives.
Episode 2
Twenty-one-year-old student and MasterChef contestant Ben Ellison spends a month living on wartime rations and the programme pays tribute to a Home Front hero, Thomas Hopper Alderson, who won Britain's first George Cross when he saved 11 lives after a German air raid on Bridlington, North Yorkshire.
Episode 3
The programme looks at one of the worst nights of the Blitz, and pays tribute to the ordinary British people who helped save St Paul's Cathedral.
Episode 4
Witnesses tell of the worst civilian tragedy on the Home Front - the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster, in which 173 people were crushed to death in a crowd fleeing an air raid that never happened. Plus, the moving stories of two couples whose love letters to each other throughout the war prove that the pen really is mightier than the sword.
Episode 5
The programme looks at the story of one of the most unexpected and intensive bombing raids in Britain, when the town of Clydebank in Scotland was virtually wiped off the map.