History's Secret Heroes: Series 3: Ita Ekpenyon and the Blitz

History's Heroes

BBC

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.8 • 704 Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After twelve weeks of nightly bombings, tensions are running high in London’s air raid shelters. Can warden Ita Ekpenyon stop a riot from breaking out?

Helena Bonham Carter shines a light on extraordinary stories from World War Two. Join her for incredible tales of deception, acts of resistance and courage.

Contact: [email protected]

A BBC Studios Audio production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

Producer: Emma Weatherill Assistant Producer: Rachel Oakes Executive Producer: Paul Smith Written by Alex von Tunzelmann Ita Ekpenyon read by Jude Akuwudike Commissioning editor for Radio 4: Rhian Roberts

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:05.4	You should grade history, really.
0:07.6	You know, rather than listening to me.
0:10.4	What happens when you unravel your family's past
0:13.1	and discover a buried confession?
0:15.7	And your father was an expert in gases?
0:19.6	In poison gas.
0:21.2	Poison gas, yes.
0:22.8	A new documentary series about family secrets
0:25.6	and how the past lives on inside us,
0:28.4	even when we try to ignore it.
0:30.3	I started to wonder what else
0:31.9	had slipped from my great-grandfather's memory
0:34.2	while writing his memoirs.
0:36.9	A new documentary series by me, Joe Dunthorne.
0:40.3	Listen to Half-Life on BBC Sounds.
0:47.6	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:55.9	When that air raid siren blasted, it was panic.
1:01.4	Panic stations.
1:03.0	December 1940.
1:05.5	London had endured 12 weeks of nightly bombings by the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe.
1:12.0	They must have been run ragged and terrified and exhausted and traumatised.
	...

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