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Actung, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me Al Murray and James Holland,

the Second World War podcast, all your Second World War podcast needs.

And James, we're joined by a very special guest today.

There's a sort of extraordinary kind of personal connection with this guest.

Something we've been talking about for a while since you discovered the letters and all this sort of stuff.

So Jim, who are we talking to and who are we going to talk about?

Well we've got a bit of a TV legend here. We've got Charlie Lawson none other than

Jim McDonald from Coronation Street.

A party played in a staggering 1,168 episodes between 1989 and 2018.

And he's been in many other things besides,

the most extraordinary thing, because when I was writing Savage Storm,

my first sort of chunk of the Italian campaign. I came across these letters by an Australian guy called

Laurie Franklin Vale and incredibly moving and vivid they were too. When he got out to first to Sicily and then into mainland Italy,

Lloyd Franklin Vale became very, very good friends of a guy in his company

who he called Johnny, John Glenny, also known as Gordon Glenny. It turns out that fellow who very, very sadly died just north of Turmally in the latter half of

1943 in Lorry Franklin Vale's arms in a night attack he'd got machine

gunned across the chest and bled out is the uncle of Charlie Lawson.

Whoever would have thought it? A few weeks ago, or a month ago or a month ago or whatever it was,

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