Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. 80 years ago, this week, at the end of October

1942, there was a turning point in the Second World War, Britain and its

Imperial and Commonwealth forces, one its first set-piece victory against an Axis army,

against a German Italian army of the Second World War. It was fought in the desert of Western

Egypt near a station called El Alamane, which would give the battle its name, and it was a victory,

a clear victory. Winston Churchill famously said, it was not the end, it was not even the beginning

of the end, but it was perhaps the end of the beginning, and he was right. It brings to a close,

a period of 1942, which in many ways I think can be seen as a nadir for the British and allied war

effort. It's a battle that was smaller than many of the gigantic clashes being fought on the

eastern front, or the battles that would happen later in Western Europe, but it was a battle that

mattered. It mattered because it would transform eventually the situation in North Africa and the

Mediterranean, but it mattered because of morale. The thing that's intangible, how to quantify

and yet can win or lose wars, it mattered because Britain and the Allies finally had a clear

cut victory. It's the 80th anniversary of this week, because I said it's a very special one for me,

because 20 years ago, for the 60th anniversary, I was out in Egypt making my first ever TV show

for the BBC. It's a win story. I was rowing as a student for Oxford University, and BBC

team came and made a video, a little short film to insert into that rowing race programming,

and I walked around Oxford talking about history and talking about how great it was to be studying

history surrounded by such extraordinary architecture history echoes in the past.

And somebody saw that, someone at the BBC and said, let's get him doing a program.

They went around the houses until someone in development worked out that my dad was a broadcaster,

a journalist, a news journalist at the BBC at the time, and they had the idea of us doing something

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