After winning silver in 2022, Bruce Mouat led the men’s curling team to two world championships. Now he’s on target for Olympic glory…
Add the Winter Olympics 2026 to your watchlist. To see our day-by-day guide of what to watch, click here. Bruce Mouat doesn’t like to remember how it felt to miss out on curling gold by the narrowest possible margin at the Winter Olympics four years ago. Deadlocked against Sweden after three hours, amid unbearable tension, the men’s team final went to sudden death – only for Great Britain to be edged out. For the skip (captain) of the men’s quartet, the sting of defeat – despite coming away with a silver medal – was enduring. “Until we competed again seven months later, I dwelt on the fact we didn’t win it,” says Mouat, curled up in a chair at home in the town of Bannockburn in Scotland. “It was so bitterly disappointing.” Yet Mouat’s rink, as a skip’s team is called in curling (where players slide 18kg granite stones on the ice), found the way to motivate themselves once more. “I tell kids in my sport not to be scared of the losses, because you learn much more from them than the wins,” he says. Then he grins on hearing the motto of tennis world number one Carlos Alcaraz: “I don’t win or I lose; I win or I learn.” “Ooh, that’s good,” smiles the Scot. “I might steal it.” Mouat, 31, goes into the 2026 Games vying for two golds. Now world champions, the line-up – Mouat, Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan – is unchanged from the Beijing defeat, the better to focus on gold in Milano Cortina. In the mixed doubles, he and Jen Dodds will repeat their Beijing partnership, where they finished fourth. It makes for a daunting 16-day schedule. “We actually start the mixed two days before the Opening Ceremony, and go right through to the last day – it’s intense,” says Mouat, who spent a total of almost 40 hours on the ice in Beijing. “I slept for three days after the 2022 Olympics.” Growing up in a Cairngorms village, Mouat was not steeped in curling. “No one in my family played it until my dad saw a newspaper article about a local club. I was too young to play then, but I went along to watch my older brother Colin until I could do it, too.” Soon after he started playing, he was given a curling video game, which became foundational to his development. “I played it endlessly with my grandpa, sitting on his lap at our cottage in Nethy Bridge. I drove him and my dad mental with it. At that age, about eight, on the actual rink I wasn’t strong enough to execute the shots – but I could in the video game, and it taught me about strategy and how to win.” Both on and off the ice, every detail matters, even restricting himself to using a burner phone throughout the Games, rather than his own mobile. “It’s to shield us from social media, put the blinkers on to avoid the negative comments you don’t want to see,” he says. “We have to look after ourselves physically and mentally.” Emotions have an impact. Mouat has been with his partner Craig Kyle for almost five years. Having come out to family, team-mates and friends when he was 19, he began to speak openly in public about his personal life just before the 2022 Games. “Coming out made not only my personal life but my sporting life so much better,” he says. “Previously it was about my own fear. It’s hard for me even to think back to that time, it was so scary. “I had built it up to be so extreme that it would impact how all my friends and family saw me. I felt unable to be myself around my team-mates. When you’re 17 or 18, all your friends are talking about girls. I couldn’t relate and was very conscious of what I was saying all the time. I didn’t know anyone in my sport who was gay. “But as soon as I came out, I could just relax, not feel like I was walking on eggshells to make sure I didn’t give myself away. It was such a relief – and from there my team had a long string of significant victories. There’s a very close connection.” The Olympic schedule means that, much as he would “love to see every single other sport” in Milano Cortina, he probably won’t be able to go to any of them, or the Opening Ceremony. Still, if he can surpass his Beijing silver, then he might well repeat the honour accorded to him four years ago when he carried the flag for Team GB at the Closing Ceremony. “To do it with my friends, family and Craig watching,” he says, “that would be great."
Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson are the greatest British ice dancers since Torvill and Dean. Can they emulate them and win Olympic gold?
Add the Winter Olympics 2026 to your watchlist. To see our day-by-day guide of what to watch, click here. By winning bronze at the World Championships in Boston last year, Lilah Fear, 26, and Lewis Gibson, 31, became Great Britain’s first world ice dance medallists since Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean took gold at the Winter Games in Sarajevo in 1984. They have been skating partners since 2016, been British champions a record eight times and have won medals at every European Championship since 2023, including a bronze just a few weeks ago in Sheffield. At the last Winter Olympics in Japan, they finished in 10th place. Ice dance comprises two segments — the rhythm (short) and the free (long) programme. What are you planning for your routines at the Winter Olympics? Lilah Fear We want to show how honoured we are to represent Great Britain, so in the short programme our music is the Spice Girls and I’m literally wearing the flag with my Geri-style dress. Lewis Gibson Then my Scottish background is reflected in the free dance. The music includes The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond, the Proclaimers and Auld Lang Syne, and we wear Royal Stewart tartan. My own tartan is Buchanan but Royal Stewart is the most renowned tartan and it looks great on the ice. Lilah, you’re the daughter of a skater and began skating at four years old — but Lewis, is it true that you started at 11, after you watched the first series of Dancing on Ice? Lewis Yes, I was playing football at the time [Lewis’s dad coached], but it wasn’t working for me. I saw the celebrities having so much fun learning the sport on Dancing on Ice, so I gave skating a go and fell in love with it. Yet you skated solo for years. You switched to ice dance at 22, when Lilah became your first partner. What makes a good pairing? Lewis We have a video of our first practice together where we just look so terrible. I can’t believe our coaches supported us through that. Lilah We were bonded by our ambition. We were willing to work hard and we have huge mutual respect, especially for our different opinions about how to make an idea work. We don’t let anything linger between us. Lewis supports me if I’m stressed, and I can lift him up if he’s tired. We step up for each other. How much sacrifice does it take for someone to reach your level? Lilah I’ve missed a lot of birthday parties for years. Wake-up calls at 5am will do that. Lewis I think of how we moved away from everything we knew to train in Montreal [at the Ice Academy]. I was 22 and Lilah was still at school. Sometimes I can’t believe we did that. Lilah Maybe that’s why we’re so close, because we didn’t know anyone. It was daunting, and we were really bad at the start. So it was tough, but we had each other. What does a typical training day look like? Lewis We start at either 7.30am or 9.15am, with up to four hours of ice time, five days a week. Off the ice, we do cardio, strengthening and conditioning work that’s very specific to our sport, then there are dance classes and stretches. We also work off the ice one day at the weekends as well. Bedtime is usually at 9pm. Lilah We also have a sports psychologist. Mindset is so important – being your own greatest supporter, knowing how to deal with nerves and doubting yourself. Diet is important, too. We’re very healthy during the week, replenishing with protein and all that science stuff. But at weekends we like some balance – cookies for Lewis, and I’m a big ice cream girl. What do you love about skating? Lilah That we get to express who we are. I’ve always loved performing. When I was younger, I’d make my parents watch shows that I created. My younger self would be speechless to see me doing that now on a world stage. Lewis I’m drawn to the commitment under pressure. I want to make myself proud in four minutes. That’s electrifying and it’s fantastic to feel the joy come back from the audience. You’ve always had support from Torvill and Dean. What’s that like? Lilah We worked with them in our first year together, which was such a “pinch me” moment. They always keep track of our progress, sending us messages of encouragement, and believe in us so much. We’re grateful for their support. But no one has been more supportive than your respective parents? Lewis Yet they never made it feel like it was a burden. They just showed up for us, long before we knew if it was going to become something. Lilah Toxic parents are definitely prevalent in sport, but it’s never been, “You’d better do well, after all I’ve invested in you these years”. They’re just proud of what we’ve built together. Lewis, you came out publicly in 2020, and you’re now married to fitness trainer Joshua Walsh. You’ve cited Tom Daley as a trailblazer for gay athletes. Lewis In any sport that has judges marking you – such as diving and ice dancing – it’s difficult to come out, because you wonder if you’ll be perceived differently from before. In ice dance a male and female often portray a romantic relationship on the ice. You never know who’s judging you. I’ve never met Tom, but it’s fantastic to see the respect he’s gained, out and proud, which made it more comfortable for me. How do you relax and what will you be doing at the Winter Olympics when you’re not competing? Lilah I love going to coffee shops, walking, seeing my friends, and I have an occasional podcast about reaching your goals. After our event finishes at the Olympics, I’m excited to see hockey, speed skating is always exciting, and I’d love to see Big Air [freestyle skiing and snowboarding]. Lewis I like doing creative little art projects. It gets me off my phone and is so calming. At the Games, I really want to see the curling. I’m also so glad it’s not our first Games. I feel so much more appreciative of what it means this time around.
Scottish curler Bruce Mouat reveals experience of coming out and why one needs a burner phone during the Winter Olympics
Bruce Mouat doesn’t like to remember how it felt to miss out on curling gold by the narrowest possible margin at the Winter Olympics four years ago. Deadlocked against Sweden after three hours, amid unbearable tension, the men’s team final went to sudden death – only for Great Britain to be edged out. For the skip (captain) of the men’s quartet, the sting of defeat – despite coming away with a silver medal – was enduring. “Until we competed again seven months later, I dwelt on the fact we didn’t win it,” says Mouat, curled up in a chair at home in the town of Bannockburn near Stirling. “It was so bitterly disappointing.” Yet Mouat’s rink, as a skip’s team is called in curling (where players slide 18kg granite stones on the ice), found the way to motivate themselves once more. “I tell kids in my sport not to be scared of the losses, because you learn much more from them than the wins,” he says. Then he grins on hearing the motto of tennis world number one Carlos Alcaraz: “I don’t win or I lose; I win or I learn.” “Ooh, that’s good,” smiles the Scot. “I might steal it.” Download our free Winter Olympics viewing guide, with a day-by-day TV planner to help you follow every winning moment Mouat, 31, goes into the 2026 Games vying for two golds. Now world champions, the line-up – Mouat, Grant Hardie, Bobby Lammie and Hammy McMillan – is unchanged from the Beijing defeat, the better to focus on gold in Milano Cortina. In the mixed doubles, he and Jen Dodds will repeat their Beijing partnership, where they finished fourth. It makes for a daunting 16-day schedule. “We actually start the mixed two days before the Opening Ceremony, and go right through to the last day – it’s intense,” says Mouat, who spent a total of almost 40 hours on the ice in Beijing. “I slept for three days after the 2022 Olympics.” Growing up in a Cairngorms village, Mouat was not steeped in curling. “No one in my family played it until my dad saw a newspaper article about a local club. I was too young to play then, but I went along to watch my older brother Colin until I could do it, too.” Soon after he started playing, he was given a curling video game, which became foundational to his development. “I played it endlessly with my grandpa, sitting on his lap at our cottage in Nethy Bridge. I drove him and my dad mental with it. At that age, about eight, on the actual rink I wasn’t strong enough to execute the shots – but I could in the video game, and it taught me about strategy and how to win.” Both on and off the ice, every detail matters, even restricting himself to using a burner phone throughout the Games, rather than his own mobile. “It’s to shield us from social media, put the blinkers on to avoid the negative comments you don’t want to see,” he says. “We have to look after ourselves physically and mentally.” Emotions have an impact. Mouat has been with his partner Craig Kyle for almost five years. Having come out to family, team-mates and friends when he was 19, he began to speak openly in public about his personal life just before the 2022 Games. “Coming out made not only my personal life but my sporting life so much better,” he says. “Previously it was about my own fear. It’s hard for me even to think back to that time, it was so scary. “I had built it up to be so extreme that it would impact how all my friends and family saw me. I felt unable to be myself around my team-mates. When you’re 17 or 18, all your friends are talking about girls. I couldn’t relate and was very conscious of what I was saying all the time. I didn’t know anyone in my sport who was gay. “But as soon as I came out, I could just relax, not feel like I was walking on eggshells to make sure I didn’t give myself away. It was such a relief – and from there my team had a long string of significant victories. There’s a very close connection.” The Olympic schedule means that, much as he would “love to see every single other sport” in Milano Cortina, he probably won’t be able to go to any of them, or the Opening Ceremony. Still, if he can surpass his Beijing silver, then he might well repeat the honour accorded to him four years ago when he carried the flag for Team GB at the Closing Ceremony. “To do it with my friends, family and Craig watching,” he says, “that would be great.” Men’s curling round robin starts on day 5 (final day 15) of the Winter Olympics. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Check out more of our Sport coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson on the European Championships hopes and British pride ahead of Winter Olympics 2026
Radio Times caught up with figure skaters Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson ahead of the European Championships on home... ice.
Ice dancers Lilah Fear, 26, and Lewis Gibson, 31, began skating together in 2016 and have been British champions a record eight times. By winning World Championship bronze last year, they became Great Britain’s first World skating medallists since Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean took their last gold in 1984. Fear and Gibson are skating at the European Championships at Sheffield’s Utilita Arena from 13th January, less than a month before the start of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milano Cortina, Italy. What does it mean to you to be competing in one of the year’s most important events on home territory, in front of British fans? Fear: We’re so excited! We’ve never really had this on this scale. We had a Grand Prix in Sheffield a few years ago which was so emotional for us – you could just feel this absolute wall of support on the ice rink. Knowing that we were representing the people in the audience was very meaningful to us. The fact that it will be the huge Sheffield stadium with so many loved ones, people we’ve grown up with, so many friendly faces there supporting us… it’s something we’re really looking forward to. The importance of your pride in Britain is reflected in your choices of music and costume this season... Gibson: Absolutely. For the rhythm dance we have a Spice Girls soundtrack, complete with Lilah in a Geri-style Union Jack dress, and then my Scottish background reflected in the free dance, with music including the Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond, The Proclaimers, and Auld Lang Syne. For the free dance we wear Royal Stewart tartan – my own tartan is Buchanan, but Royal Stewart is the most world-renowned tartan and it looks great on the ice. You’ve won two silvers and a bronze at the last three European Championships – but all three of those times Charlène Guignard and Marco Fabbri of Italy have taken gold, so once again it’s a really tough ask. Gibson: That’s right, although the last time we competed in Sheffield was just a few weeks ago at the end of November when we won the British title for the eighth time. These Europeans are incredibly important both in their own right, and as a step towards the Winter Olympics in February. Fear: I think it’s going to be a wonderful send-off for the Olympics. I hope the crowd get properly involved, and that they really feel the love of skating. It’s going to be very special. Don't miss our free Winter Olympics 2026 TV guide - download your copy now. Check out more of our <a id="menura5f" class="fui-Link ___1q1shib f2hkw1w f3rmtva f1ewtqcl fyind8e f1k6fduh f1w7gpdv fk6fouc fjoy568 figsok6 f1s184ao f1mk8lai fnbmjn9 f1o700av f13mvf36 f1cmlufx f9n3di6 f1ids18y f1tx3yz7 f1deo86v f1eh06m1 f1iescvh fhgqx19 f1olyrje f1p93eir f1nev41a f1h8hb77 f1lqvz6u f10aw75t fsle3fq f17ae5zn" title="https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sport/" href="https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sport/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Link Sport">Sport coverage or visit our <a id="menura5h" class="fui-Link ___1q1shib f2hkw1w f3rmtva f1ewtqcl fyind8e f1k6fduh f1w7gpdv fk6fouc fjoy568 figsok6 f1s184ao f1mk8lai fnbmjn9 f1o700av f13mvf36 f1cmlufx f9n3di6 f1ids18y f1tx3yz7 f1deo86v f1eh06m1 f1iescvh fhgqx19 f1olyrje f1p93eir f1nev41a f1h8hb77 f1lqvz6u f10aw75t fsle3fq f17ae5zn" title="https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/tv-listings/" href="https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/tv-listings/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Link TV Guide">TV Guide and <a id="menura5j" class="fui-Link ___1q1shib f2hkw1w f3rmtva f1ewtqcl fyind8e f1k6fduh f1w7gpdv fk6fouc fjoy568 figsok6 f1s184ao f1mk8lai fnbmjn9 f1o700av f13mvf36 f1cmlufx f9n3di6 f1ids18y f1tx3yz7 f1deo86v f1eh06m1 f1iescvh fhgqx19 f1olyrje f1p93eir f1nev41a f1h8hb77 f1lqvz6u f10aw75t fsle3fq f17ae5zn" title="https://www.radiotimes.com/streaming-guide/" href="https://www.radiotimes.com/streaming-guide/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Link Streaming Guide">Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to <a id="menura5l" class="fui-Link ___1q1shib f2hkw1w f3rmtva f1ewtqcl fyind8e f1k6fduh f1w7gpdv fk6fouc fjoy568 figsok6 f1s184ao f1mk8lai fnbmjn9 f1o700av f13mvf36 f1cmlufx f9n3di6 f1ids18y f1tx3yz7 f1deo86v f1eh06m1 f1iescvh fhgqx19 f1olyrje f1p93eir f1nev41a f1h8hb77 f1lqvz6u f10aw75t fsle3fq f17ae5zn" title="https://www.radiotimes.com/audio/podcasts/" href="https://www.radiotimes.com/audio/podcasts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Link The Radio Times Podcast">The Radio Times Podcast.
Ken Knowles was Warrant Officer First Class (Conductor) of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps
Add VJ Day: We Were There to your watchlist Ken Knowles served in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, which is responsible for supplying weapons, ammunition and equipment to the Army. He’s now 100 years old and a recipient of the Burma Star. What was your early life like? I was born in Salford in May 1925, and left school at 14 to work in a timber yard. In 1941, at 16, I became an ARP warden, with a bicycle. I’d identify where a bomb had fallen, pedal like the clappers to HQ to tell them, and they’d send a squad to defuse it. You were called up in 1942? Yes, billetted in Leicestershire, I slept on a stable floor on a straw mattress, with a bucket for a toilet, which I emptied each morning. I failed my medical to be a fighting soldier because I had a crooked arm. I couldn’t throw a grenade or lift a rifle. Then they saw I was an organiser who could sort things out. I spent 18 months on logistical training, learning about military vehicles and materials. When you sailed for India in 1943, did you have any idea how far from home you were travelling? I had never been further than Blackpool before I was called up. I’d heard of India, sort of, but never Burma [now Myanmar]. It took three weeks to sail there. Then there was a four-day drive in a cattle truck to reach Calcutta [now Kolkata]. We slept on the floor, and the only toilet was a hole in the floor. In Calcutta, I was in charge of unloading Jeeps coming off US ships, before I went to a logistical airbase on the Indo-Burma border. During your three years there, what were your responsibilities? We’d go into the jungle and retrieve battle armour left behind in the fighting — rifles, bullets, tin hats, uniforms, food. Back at camp, units would make it good enough to use again. I also packed pallets on Dakota planes flying out to drop supplies by parachute. What do you remember of VE Day and VJ Day? On VE Day, I got some tins of processed ham from stores and some eggs from local labourers. So we had ham and eggs for breakfast, and we fired two flares in the air. For dinner, there were tins of Canadian hash and we listened to Henry Hall’s band on the radio. As for VJ Day, that came on the radio and there was a lot of singing and dancing. How will you mark VJ Day 80? I’ve been invited to Lancaster Castle where a beacon will be lit, and I’ll read the Kohima Epitaph — the inscription on the memorial of the 2nd British Division in the Kohima War Cemetery in India: “When you go home, tell them of us and say, ‘For your tomorrow, we gave our today.’” A lot of good souls gave their lives and we should remember them, not only on Remembrance Sunday but all the time.
Tournament Director Jamie Baker on Wimbledon's removal of line judges
Add Wimbledon to your watchlist Wimbledon will be without line judges this year. Jamie Baker, who has been Tournament Director at Wimbledon since 2020, was British number two behind Andy Murray in 2008 and played five times in the Wimbledon singles, explains all: After 147 years, Wimbledon has dispensed with line judges in favour of electronic line calling. That’s a big change… It’s simply the latest version of Hawk-Eye, which first arrived at Wimbledon in 2007. The system uses cameras, computers and sensors to calculate the ball’s trajectory and determine if it’s in or out. Until now, line judges made the calls, and Hawk-Eye ball tracking was used only as a technical adjudicator if a player felt that a line judge’s call was wrong. Now we have added more cameras to the ball tracking, and we no longer have line judges. Two of the other three grand slam tournaments — the Australian Open and the US Open — brought in electronic line calling in 2021 and 2022. Why now for Wimbledon? I began talking to our board about this trend three years ago. Now it’s the norm in professional tennis and players are used to it. So no more player challenges or on-court replays? That’s right. An electronic line call cannot be appealed or overturned. But if a player wants to see the image of the ball on the line, they can request it during the match — but that never happens because one of the benefits is that there’s genuine acceptance now of the calls being made. It’s very helpful for a player to know there’s no doubt. In my career I lost multiple matches because I lost my cool when I felt I’d had a bad call from a line judge. That whole dynamic has disappeared and it’s one less thing to get annoyed about. Will it feel like Wimbledon has lost some of its spectacle and character? The gladiatorial nature of tennis is actively emphasised by fewer officials on court. Besides, we still have the ballboys and girls, along with the umpire. Meanwhile, calls of “fault” or “out” are audibly announced by a variety of recorded voices. The human element is absolutely still there. Could umpires also become redundant one day? I can’t see it. They manage the whole match, acting as a mediator. I can’t think of any sport where there’s no one in charge on the field of play. Is anything at Wimbledon so sacrosanct that it can never be swept aside? The grass surface, definitely. The white clothing is also massively supported by the players. We’re guardians of the institution, walking a tightrope. That’s the difficulty in breaking a tradition — there’s expectation that we innovate, even while we value the traditions that make Wimbledon what it is.
'I saw other girls making daisy chains in the playground'
Josie Green, 32, plays for Crystal Palace in the Women’s Super League and has 39 caps for Wales, who have qualified for the Euros finals for the first time in their history
Add the Women's Euro 2025 to your watchlist As a young girl, Josie Green says she had no visible female football role models to look up to. “There was no one I could picture myself becoming, because I could only see men’s football on TV,” the Welsh international says. “Now I wonder why I didn’t question it. “These days, knowing that young girls and boys can see professional female players like me on television is a big driver in what I do. What the women before us did was amazing, to get it to the place we are now.” These are monumental times for Welsh women’s football. A memorable play-off victory over the Republic of Ireland last December saw the team earn a place at Euro 2025, their first ever major international tournament. “It’s so exciting and fantastic,” says Green, who grew up in Hertfordshire but qualified to represent Wales through her grandfather. “Making history for our country like this was a massive goal, which has taken many years of effort, especially after falling at the final hurdle last time. You think it will never happen. We’re super-proud.” For all that, not all voices are supportive. Where once the barracking for the women’s game was limited to a few voices on the sidelines, now they throng on social media. “It’s constant — nasty comments on videos, men or boys saying stuff to drag women’s football through the mud. It’s very hard to avoid it. Social media is important to drive visibility for our sport. But if you’re not in a good place, social media can be very dark.” For Green, turning professional at 25, just as a teaching career beckoned, was a big decision. “I was newly qualified as a PE and geography teacher, doing my first year of teacher training, when I was offered a football contract. I had a crisis in my head about the insecurity of it — the men’s game has far more financial stability. “I had just bought my first house. The contract was only for a year and wasn’t as well paid as teaching, which also had a clear career pathway. I thought, ‘If football doesn’t work out, where does that leave me with my mortgage?’ But I chose the game I love.” Now she feels it was one of the best decisions she ever made, and is proud that the number of girls playing football in Wales has tripled since 2016. “When I was first called up in 2010, we wore cast-off men’s kit, which was hugely oversized on us. In 2023, the Football Association of Wales began paying the men’s and women’s national teams an equal match fee. That was a real milestone. It’s no coincidence we’ve now qualified for the Euros.” Green, who plays as both a defender and a midfielder, started playing football at the age of six, kicking a ball about with her brother and their friends — all boys. “I’d be out there for hours. It never fazed me playing only boys, and if I hadn’t felt so comfortable it could all have turned out differently. I saw other girls making daisy chains in the playground and I knew I didn’t want to do that.” Fundamental to it all was the support of her family, particularly her late father Clive. She began her senior career at Watford and enjoyed successful spells at Tottenham Hotspur and Leicester City before joining her current club, Crystal Palace, last August. Soon after earning her first Wales cap at the age of 16, her father contracted pancreatic cancer. For the next five years, until after his death, she found it difficult to engage with football. “Family was more important,” she says. “It’s a horrible disease to see someone go through. I remember him being pitchside on a very cold day in the latter stages, determined to be there watching me. I know he’s always with us. He would have absolutely loved what I’ve achieved.”
'I wished I was a man, with what they earned'
Gillian Coultard MBE, 61, was the first woman to reach 100 England caps, while winning two National League titles and six FA Cups with Doncaster Belles
Gillian Coultard is frank about her envy of today’s elite female footballers. Throughout her career in the 1980s and 90s, she not only fitted in four training sessions and a match every week around her full-time factory job, but it was an era when competing at the highest level – even for England – actually cost her money. “Now they can get a job out of it,” she says. “We didn’t have that. Most of the time, I had to pay my own way to play, even though my employer was supportive, giving me three weeks’ paid leave for the 1995 World Cup in Sweden. View Green Video on the source website “I wished I was a man, with what they earned. Football cost me a fortune.” The youngest of eight children of a Yorkshire barmaid (“My dad was around but didn’t stay long”), she was seven when she first joined her four brothers playing football on a local green. “At school I played football, rugby and cricket – the boys’ sports – and made the boys’ football team,” she says. “I was the only girl, of course. No one said I couldn’t play until I was 13 at grammar school. “I had to play hockey and rounders instead. But I wanted to play football. It was like my whole world had ended.” Then a teacher put her in touch with the legendary Doncaster Belles, one of the most successful women’s teams in the country. “Twice a week I would get the bus ten miles to Doncaster and back, when there weren’t many buses and less money. A lot of the ‘Donny’ players were much older than me, but they saw me right. I couldn’t wait for Friday training and the Sunday match. “We were always second to the men, we couldn’t train or play till they were done. It would be dark by then, so we’d use car headlights to illuminate the pitch. “Away games would be at working men’s club grounds just as the pubs were coming out, and the blokes would shout that we should be at home washing pots, having kids. I didn’t respond. All I cared about was playing better.” With the women’s game in its developmental infancy, age brackets didn’t exist. Coultard earned her first England trial at 13 – she achieved a record 125 appearances by her retirement in 2000. “I treasure representing England,” she says. “I’m proud I’m from a working-class background and put something back into Thorne, my home town [in South Yorkshire]. I watch girls training on local pitches now and it makes me cry because it started off with one – me,” she says, recalling her school days as the only girl in the team. “When I walk down Wembley Way and see everyone with the names of women players on the back of their shirts, I think ‘Wow!’. The FA called us the lost generation. Others had it worse before my era and I’m grateful to them, like those after me are grateful to us. We’ve put women’s football on the map.”
Carol Thomas BEM, 70, was the second captain of England between 1976 and 1985, leading them to their first European final in 1984. She was awarded the British Empire Medal in 2022 for services to association football and charity
Add the Women's Euro 2025 to your watchlist We used to get one man and his dog turning up, but I was blown away to be playing for my country,” says Carol Thomas of her first time playing for England in a win against France. Spectator numbers increased only slowly from that match in November 1974. Gradually the attitudes of those watching began to change. “Men would call out stuff from the sidelines – ‘Shouldn’t you be in the kitchen?’ But those same men kept coming back to watch the football because it was good. We won them over.” View Green Video on the source website Working as a clerk at Northern Dairies, Thomas was lucky to be given paid leave when she played for England. Many others had to use holiday or unpaid leave, or miss the games entirely. “Our kit was second hand from the under-18s boys,” she recalls. With just six caps, Thomas was stunned to be made England captain at the age of 20. “I was so proud to tell my fiancé Alan and my parents. Alan was involved in local football and would do extra training with me after work. When we got married in 1979, we skipped a honeymoon so I could play in a tournament in Italy.” She led England to their first matches outside Europe, at the global invitational 1981 Mundialito in Japan, although the players had to pay for their own flights. In 1984 she captained the side to their first European Championship final, and a year later she received her 50th cap from England football legend Sir Tom Finney. “Shaking his hand was amazing,” says Thomas. “Such a nice man, and he respected our game.” But not everybody did. “In 1993 when the FA took over women’s football [from the Women’s FA], they acted like there had never been an England women’s team before then, as if there were no previous pioneers. After all our struggles, the women of our era felt left out in the dark. “It took the Lionesses winning the Euros [in 2022] to change that. Even so, I’m not sure full equality will come in my lifetime. It can’t until the crowds for men’s and women’s football are the same size.” Younger players, she says, “have no idea what we went through. We’re proud to have done it. I respect the Lionesses’ skills but I wouldn’t change the era I played in. We were the stepping stone for where they are today.”
'I was incensed the FA wouldn't let me play'
Wendy Owen, 71, was capped 16 times for her country. She was a member of the squad for England’s first ever international in 1972, a 3–2 win over Scotland
Add the Women's Euro 2025 to your watchlist It was the England men’s team victory in the final of the 1966 World Cup that inspired Wendy Owen to play football at every possible moment. She saw no difference between herself and the other kids playing kickabout on the council estate in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, where she grew up. Eventually, she would go on to become a member of the first women’s England international squad. “At 11, I would pretend to be Geoff Hurst or Martin Peters – my heroes – in our back garden,” she remembers. “I joined my two brothers and their friends playing football on the green in front of the houses. I didn’t really notice I was the only girl.” But that didn’t last long. Owen was a pioneer of women’s football, but she had to overcome many obstacles in order to play, simply because of her sex. At the age of 13, she encountered her first hurdle – the Football Association’s ban, dating from 1921, forbidding girls and women from playing on its pitches, prevented her from joining a league team. “The boys I played with formed a proper team so that they could join a league, and I was excited to be part of it – until I found out that I couldn’t. I was incensed.” But her father, a local youth club leader, resourcefully formed a girls’ league using unregistered referees and pitches. Owen made such an impression that she was invited to join Thame, a club in Oxfordshire. Her father would ferry her on the twice-weekly 50-mile round trip for training and games. “We played on such rubbish factory pitches that after one winter match we were all completely soaked in mud from head to foot. But there was no changing room, never mind showers. So both teams walked to the local cattle marketplace where there was a hose for washing the livestock and we used that, hosing ourselves down like cattle. It made the local paper and shamed the council into giving us a hut with a basic shower.” After the FA ban was overturned, she was spotted by Eric Worthington, the first England women’s team manager, who included her in the squad for the historic first international in 1972. By then at sports college training to be a PE teacher, Owen had to ask for leave of absence. “I was advised to wear a skirt for that meeting and had to borrow one as I didn’t own one.” She almost didn’t get permission to join what would become such an historically important match. “The college principal, a woman, said to me, ‘Surely women playing football is just a joke?’ It was one of the male governors who approved it.” The press showed some interest in the England v Scotland match, but it came with a side order of sexism. “We got a bit of media coverage before the game, but they only wanted to know what your boyfriend thought,” says Owen. “Sylvia Gore, who became the first woman to score an international goal for England in the game, said her boyfriend had told her to choose between him and football, so she chose football. The reporter replied: ‘Surely getting married is more important?’ <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/06/27shutterstockeditorial889280a-fcbe98b-e1750692233444.jpg" width="3664" height="2440" alt="Week 27 Euros Wendy Owen" title="Wendy Owen Touches Up Her Eye Make-up With England''s First Women''s International Team In The Dressing Room At Wembley Stadium North London After A Training Session Ahead Of Their First Official Women''s International Match Against Scotland At Raven" /> “Our captain Sheila Parker was a mum, and they asked her, ‘Who’s looking after your baby?’ Another reporter said to me: ‘Surely women playing football is like men knitting?’ One photographer brought a make-up compact with him and asked me to pose putting on eyeshadow, which I did, even though I never wore it.” But nothing could blunt the thrill of that first historic match, even though as a substitute Owen didn’t get on the pitch. Her first cap came the following year, although it would be half a century before the FA awarded women their actual caps. Until then, Flo Bilton, who was a driving force in the women’s game, handmade their own version. Ultimately, Owen played 16 times for England until she retired at 26 to become a coach, concerned at having headaches from heading the ball. “I do worry about dementia,” she says, musing on the high incidence from that era in the men’s game. “But I’m well. Looking back, I could never have imagined women’s football would reach where it has. “I didn’t feel like a pioneer. We just wanted to play football. I don’t envy today’s players because we had no pressure on us.” But the home win in 2022 wouldn’t have happened without those early days of struggle. “When the Lionesses won the Euros, I was shouting and screaming and jumping round my living room, and my phone went mad with texts congratulating me. They all said, ‘Without you, it couldn’t have happened.’” And, she concedes: “I suppose that’s true.”
Wales midfielder Josie Green says "nasty" comments 'dragging women’s football through the mud' are "constant"
"Making history for our country like this was a massive goal."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Josie Green, 32, plays for Crystal Palace in the Women’s Super League and has 39 caps for Wales, who have qualified for the Euros finals for the first time in their history. As a young girl, Josie Green says she had no visible female football role models to look up to. "There was no one I could picture myself becoming, because I could only see men’s football on TV,” the Welsh international says. "Now I wonder why I didn’t question it. These days, knowing that young girls and boys can see professional female players like me on television is a big driver in what I do. What the women before us did was amazing, to get it to the place we are now." These are monumental times for Welsh women’s football. A memorable play-off victory over the Republic of Ireland last December saw the team earn a place at Euro 2025, their first ever major international tournament. "It’s so exciting and fantastic," says Green, who grew up in Hertfordshire but qualified to represent Wales through her grandfather. "Making history for our country like this was a massive goal, which has taken many years of effort, especially after falling at the final hurdle last time. You think it will never happen. We’re super-proud." For all that, not all voices are supportive. Where once the barracking for the women’s game was limited to a few voices on the sidelines, now they throng on social media. "It’s constant — nasty comments on videos, men or boys saying stuff to drag women’s football through the mud. It’s very hard to avoid it. Social media is important to drive visibility for our sport. But if you’re not in a good place, social media can be very dark." For Green, turning professional at 25, just as a teaching career beckoned, was a big decision. "I was newly qualified as a PE and geography teacher, doing my first year of teacher training, when I was offered a football contract. I had a crisis in my head about the insecurity of it — the men’s game has far more financial stability. "I had just bought my first house. The contract was only for a year and wasn’t as well paid as teaching, which also had a clear career pathway. I thought, ‘If football doesn’t work out, where does that leave me with my mortgage?’ But I chose the game I love." Now she feels it was one of the best decisions she ever made, and is proud that the number of girls playing football in Wales has tripled since 2016. "When I was first called up in 2010, we wore cast-off men’s kit, which was hugely oversized on us. In 2023, the Football Association of Wales began paying the men’s and women’s national teams an equal match fee. That was a real milestone. It’s no coincidence we’ve now qualified for the Euros." Green, who plays as both a defender and a midfielder, started playing football at the age of six, kicking a ball about with her brother and their friends — all boys. "I’d be out there for hours. It never fazed me playing only boys, and if I hadn’t felt so comfortable it could all have turned out differently. I saw other girls making daisy chains in the playground and I knew I didn’t want to do that." Fundamental to it all was the support of her family, particularly her late father Clive. She began her senior career at Watford and enjoyed successful spells at Tottenham Hotspur and Leicester City before joining her current club, Crystal Palace, last August. Soon after earning her first Wales cap at the age of 16, her father contracted pancreatic cancer. For the next five years, until after his death, she found it difficult to engage with football. "Family was more important," she says. "It’s a horrible disease to see someone go through. I remember him being pitch side on a very cold day in the latter stages, determined to be there watching me. I know he’s always with us. He would have absolutely loved what I’ve achieved." The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Check out more of our Sport coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
The first woman to reach 100 England caps says her "lost generation" put women's football on the map
"I wished I was a man, with what they earned. Football cost me a fortune."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Gillian Coultard MBE, 61, was the first woman to reach 100 England caps, while winning two National League titles and six FA Cups with Doncaster Belles. Gillian Coultard is frank about her envy of today's elite female footballers. Throughout her career in the 1980s and '90s, she not only fitted in four training sessions and a match every week around her full-time factory job, but it was an era when competing at the highest level – even for England – actually cost her money. "Now they can get a job out of it," she says. "We didn't have that. Most of the time, I had to pay my own way to play, even though my employer was supportive, giving me three weeks' paid leave for the 1995 World Cup in Sweden. "I wished I was a man, with what they earned. Football cost me a fortune." The youngest of eight children of a Yorkshire barmaid ("My dad was around but didn’t stay long"), she was seven when she first joined her four brothers playing football on a local green. "At school I played football, rugby and cricket – the boys’ sports – and made the boys’ football team," she says. "I was the only girl, of course. No one said I couldn’t play until I was 13 at grammar school. I had to play hockey and rounders instead. But I wanted to play football. It was like my whole world had ended." Then a teacher put her in touch with the legendary Doncaster Belles, one of the most successful women’s teams in the country. "Twice a week I would get the bus ten miles to Doncaster and back, when there weren’t many buses and less money. A lot of the ‘Donny’ players were much older than me, but they saw me right. I couldn’t wait for Friday training and the Sunday match. "We were always second to the men, we couldn’t train or play till they were done. It would be dark by then, so we’d use car headlights to illuminate the pitch. "Away games would be at working men’s club grounds just as the pubs were coming out, and the blokes would shout that we should be at home washing pots, having kids. I didn’t respond. All I cared about was playing better." With the women’s game in its developmental infancy, age brackets didn’t exist. Coultard earned her first England trial at 13 – she achieved a record 125 appearances by her retirement in 2000. "I treasure representing England," she says. "I’m proud I’m from a working-class background and put something back into Thorne, my home town [in South Yorkshire]. "I watch girls training on local pitches now and it makes me cry because it started off with one – me,” she says, recalling her school days as the only girl in the team. "When I walk down Wembley Way and see everyone with the names of women players on the back of their shirts, I think ‘Wow!’. The FA called us the lost generation. Others had it worse before my era and I’m grateful to them, like those after me are grateful to us. We’ve put women’s football on the map." The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Check out more of our Sport coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
England's former women's captain doubts full equality will come to football in her lifetime
"I'm not sure full equality will come in my lifetime. It can't until the crowds for men's and women's football are the same size."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Carol Thomas BEM, 70, was the second captain of England between 1976 and 1985, leading them to their first European final in 1984. She was awarded the British Empire Medal in 2022 for services to association football and charity. "We used to get one man and his dog turning up, but I was blown away to be playing for my country," says Carol Thomas of her first time playing for England in a win against France. Spectator numbers increased only slowly from that match in November 1974. Gradually the attitudes of those watching began to change. "Men would call out stuff from the sidelines – 'Shouldn’t you be in the kitchen?' But those same men kept coming back to watch the football because it was good. We won them over." Working as a clerk at Northern Dairies, Thomas was lucky to be given paid leave when she played for England. Many others had to use holiday or unpaid leave, or miss the games entirely. "Our kit was second hand from the under-18s boys," she recalls. With just six caps, Thomas was stunned to be made England captain at the age of 20. "I was so proud to tell my fiancé Alan and my parents. Alan was involved in local football and would do extra training with me after work. When we got married in 1979, we skipped a honeymoon so I could play in a tournament in Italy." She led England to their first matches outside Europe, at the global invitational 1981 Mundialito in Japan, although the players had to pay for their own flights. In 1984 she captained the side to their first European Championship final, and a year later she received her 50th cap from England football legend Sir Tom Finney. "Shaking his hand was amazing," says Thomas. "Such a nice man, and he respected our game." But not everybody did. "In 1993 when the FA took over women’s football [from the Women’s FA], they acted like there had never been an England women’s team before then, as if there were no previous pioneers. After all our struggles, the women of our era felt left out in the dark. "It took the Lionesses winning the Euros [in 2022] to change that. Even so, I’m not sure full equality will come in my lifetime. It can’t until the crowds for men’s and women’s football are the same size." Younger players, she says, "have no idea what we went through. We're proud to have done it. I respect the Lionesses' skills but I wouldn’t change the era I played in. We were the stepping stone for where they are today." The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Check out more of our Sport coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Wendy Owen, pioneer of women's football, recalls early sexism – and being told it was a joke
Owen was a pioneer of women's football, but she had to overcome many obstacles in order to play, simply because of her sex.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Wendy Owen, 71, was capped 16 times for her country. She was a member of the squad for England’s first ever international in 1972, a 3-2 win over Scotland. It was the England men’s team victory in the final of the 1966 World Cup that inspired Wendy Owen to play football at every possible moment. She saw no difference between herself and the other kids playing kick-about on the council estate in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, where she grew up. Eventually, she would go on to become a member of the first women's England international squad. "At 11, I would pretend to be Geoff Hurst or Martin Peters – my heroes – in our back garden," she remembers. "I joined my two brothers and their friends playing football on the green in front of the houses. I didn’t really notice I was the only girl." But that didn't last long. Owen was a pioneer of women’s football, but she had to overcome many obstacles in order to play, simply because of her sex. At the age of 13, she encountered her first hurdle – the Football Association’s ban, dating from 1921, forbidding girls and women from playing on its pitches, prevented her from joining a league team. "The boys I played with formed a proper team so that they could join a league, and I was excited to be part of it – until I found out that I couldn’t. I was incensed." But her father, a local youth club leader, resourcefully formed a girls’ league using unregistered referees and pitches. Owen made such an impression that she was invited to join Thame, a club in Oxfordshire. Her father would ferry her on the twice-weekly 50-mile round trip for training and games. "We played on such rubbish factory pitches that after one winter match we were all completely soaked in mud from head to foot. But there was no changing room, never mind showers. So both teams walked to the local cattle marketplace where there was a hose for washing the livestock and we used that, hosing ourselves down like cattle. It made the local paper and shamed the council into giving us a hut with a basic shower." After the FA ban was overturned, she was spotted by Eric Worthington, the first England women’s team manager, who included her in the squad for the historic first international in 1972. By then at sports college training to be a PE teacher, Owen had to ask for leave of absence. "I was advised to wear a skirt for that meeting and had to borrow one as I didn’t own one." She almost didn’t get permission to join what would become such an historically important match. "The college principal, a woman, said to me, 'Surely women playing football is just a joke?' It was one of the male governors who approved it." The press showed some interest in the England v Scotland match, but it came with a side order of sexism. “We got a bit of media coverage before the game, but they only wanted to know what your boyfriend thought,” says Owen. “Sylvia Gore, who became the first woman to score an international goal for England in the game, said her boyfriend had told her to choose between him and football, so she chose football. The reporter replied: ‘Surely getting married is more important?’ "Our captain Sheila Parker was a mum, and they asked her, 'Who’s looking after your baby?’ Another reporter said to me: ‘Surely women playing football is like men knitting?’ One photographer brought a make-up compact with him and asked me to pose putting on eyeshadow, which I did, even though I never wore it." But nothing could blunt the thrill of that first historic match, even though as a substitute Owen didn’t get on the pitch. Her first cap came the following year, although it would be half a century before the FA awarded women their actual caps. Until then, Flo Bilton, who was a driving force in the women’s game, handmade their own version. Ultimately, Owen played 16 times for England until she retired at 26 to become a coach, concerned at having headaches from heading the ball. "I do worry about dementia," she says, musing on the high incidence from that era in the men’s game. "But I’m well. Looking back, I could never have imagined women’s football would reach where it has. I didn’t feel like a pioneer. We just wanted to play football. I don’t envy today’s players because we had no pressure on us." But the home win in 2022 wouldn’t have happened without those early days of struggle. "When the Lionesses won the Euros, I was shouting and screaming and jumping round my living room, and my phone went mad with texts congratulating me. They all said, 'Without you, it couldn’t have happened.'" And, she concedes: "I suppose that’s true." The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Check out more of our Sport coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
'I'll be thinking of those who didn't come back'
As the nation comes together to mark 80 years since VE Day and pay tribute to those who served, four members of the Second World War generation share their experiences and tell us what the day means to them
The 80th anniversary of VE Day is on Thursday 8 May, but will be marked throughout the week from 5 May. Add VE Day 80 to your watchlist
'There was a group of airmen who we talked to, and I got a kiss from each of them'
102–year–old former ATS member Marjorie Hanson was among those partying in Trafalgar Square on VE Day 1945
The 80th anniversary of VE Day is on Thursday 8 May, but will be marked throughout the week from 5 May. Add VE Day 80 to your watchlist It’s a day familiar from black-and-white newsreel footage. After almost six years of war, crowds celebrated VE Day on the streets of London, stretching from outside Buckingham Place to Whitehall and Piccadilly Circus. Marjorie Hanson, then aged 22, was in the women’s branch of the British Army and remembers joining the rejoicing throng in Trafalgar Square. “My mum said, ‘Let’s go up to London!’ So we took the train the few stops from Croydon to Victoria,” she recalls, her eyes shining brightly with the memory of 8 May 1945, the day after Germany’s unconditional surrender. “I had no idea it would be like it was. The streets were so full – people everywhere having a good time, everyone talking to everyone else.” Revellers waded into the fountains, danced a conga and climbed onto the lion statues. Hanson, now 102, was wearing her Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) uniform. “It was so crowded with happy people. Mum and I were dancing and singing. There was a group of airmen who we talked to, and I got a kiss from each of them. It was late before we went home.” Hanson, then Marjorie Wright, was 19 when she joined the ATS in 1941. “I was in a reserved occupation [a job allowing military exemption, working in the offices of United Dairies], but I decided to join up anyway,” she says at home in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire. After training, she was posted to work as a filing clerk at Didcot Central Ordnance Depot, which stored a huge range of military supplies, from equipment for mountain and snow warfare to bicycles, industrial gases and camouflage. “At first there were very few women but it grew and grew,” she says. “Everyone helped each other.” The Oxfordshire depot was practically a town in itself, expanding to 7,410 personnel, including 850 ATS, by 1943. “Sometimes I’d do sentry duty from midnight until 2am, armed only with a pickaxe handle,” Hanson recalls. “I’m not quite sure what I could have done with that to stop the Germans if they’d arrived.” Didcot COD played a vital role in D-Day, supplying vast amounts of military for the invasion and subsequent liberation of Europe. “I’m proud to have played a part. Our work was sending out stores and keeping track of it all. If the troops were doing well, we sent stores out. If they weren’t doing so well, the stores came back because they weren’t needed.” She met her husband Tom, an articifer in the Fleet Air Arm, at a dance in the depot’s gymnasium, and they married in 1944 when she was 21. After the war he returned to his previous job as a sheet metal worker, and they had a daughter. A widow since 1989, Hanson’s thoughts on VE Day will be with those who didn’t return. “Cousins, uncles, lots of boys I went to school with and people from my cycling club were killed – young men and women who died to save the country. It’s important we remember.” Three days before VE Day, on 5 May, she will be a guest at Liberation Day celebrations in the Netherlands, where citizens thank the British veterans who helped secure their freedom. She will be among wartime service representatives taking part in a parade in Wageningen, where crowds lining the streets are expected to exceed 100,000. “I’ll feel like the Queen,” she smiles at the prospect. “I’ll have to practise waving!”
'I always felt guilty that they kept me behind'
101–year–old Jack Gledhill didn’t see active service, but is proud to have played a part in D-Day
The 80th anniversary of VE Day is on Thursday 8 May, but will be marked throughout the week from 5 May. Add VE Day 80 to your watchlist Corporal Jack Gledhill of the Royal Engineers never saw frontline action in the Second World War, yet British military operations would have been impossible without people like him. Now aged 101, Gledhill was 19 when he joined up in 1943 and became a sapper — a soldier who specialises in engineering tasks such as building and repairing roads, cranes and bridges, and laying and clearing mines. After completing their training, the other men in Gledhill’s group were deployed to action in Normandy and elsewhere. “I was kept behind because they asked me to be an instructor, training more recruits as sappers,” he remembers. By 1944, Gledhill was organising engineer personnel for D-Day, instructing troops on how to avoid enemy mines and booby traps and build bridges on land and sea. “I feel pride that I contributed, passing on my knowledge to the new sappers,” he says. “But I was frustrated that I never saw frontline action. I always felt guilty that they kept me behind. A lot of the men I trained with got killed on the front line. It was horrible.” VE Day was just another working day for Gledhill. By then he was engaged to “beautiful” Margaret, having met her at a Sunday-night dance at the barracks. They spent the first three years of their marriage in Malta, where, while still in the Army, Gledhill helped rebuild bomb-damaged buildings. A widower for 30 years, Gledhill is now a grandfather of 15, a great-grandfather to as many again, and a great-great-grandfather to one, with another on the way. He is looking forward to the VE Day commemorations. “I’ll watch whatever is happening on the telly,” he smiles. “I’m glad I’m still here to celebrate.”
'They had to move the rubble to come and get me'
86–year–old Ruby Currell was one of only three children to survive an inferno that engulfed her classroom after a USAF bomber crashed into her Lancashire school in August 1944
The 80th anniversary of VE Day is on Thursday 8 May, but will be marked throughout the week from 5 May. Add VE Day 80 to your watchlist When Ruby Currell was five years old, a USAF Liberator bomber crashed into her school in the Lancashire village of Freckleton. The accident, in the midst of a sudden storm on 23 August 1944, killed 61 people, 38 of them infants at Holy Trinity School. “As long as I live, I will keep the memory of the other children alive,” Currell says, at her Freckleton home, where she keeps scrapbooks filled with newspaper cuttings about the disaster. Marking VE Day is important to 86-year-old Currell, but Britain’s worst aviation accident in the Second World War is something she carries with her every day. She wants future generations to remember those whose lives were lost. “In Freckleton, we hold a service on the anniversary every year,” she says. “They look to me to keep the memory going.” The 20 boys and girls in Currell’s class had only started school the day before the air crash. Currell, then Ruby Whittle, was one of only three children to survive the inferno that engulfed her classroom. Two teachers, Jennie Hall, who had just finished her training, and Louisa Hulme, who was due to retire that Christmas, were also killed. The B-24 Liberator bomber, fully loaded with almost 2,800 gallons of aviation fuel, was on a test flight from an airfield in the nearby village of Warton. At the time, Freckleton was dubbed “Little America” because of its proximity to the airbase, where more than 10,000 American airmen were stationed. When the violent storm struck, the 25-ton bomber crashed into the centre of the village, destroying three houses, the local café and the infants wing of Holy Trinity School. Currell has a clear memory of events that morning: “Around 10.30am our teacher Miss Hall was about to read us a story, but we could hear a storm approaching and it suddenly got dark as night. Miss Hall had to put the lights on. There was so much noise from the thunder and the rain… and then there was an almighty bang. I saw the teacher fall over and a girl fall from her desk, so I dived under mine – it was wartime, that’s what we were taught. It was terrifying.” The clock on the classroom wall stopped at 10.47am. “There was rubble all around me. Then I saw two faces in a little gap in the doorway: the headmaster and an American airman. They couldn’t get in. They were beckoning me, but I wouldn’t move. They had to move the rubble to come and get me.” Currell spent 18 months in hospital, including six months in the airbase hospital. Fifty per cent of her body was burned, across all her limbs, her shoulders and face. Years of then-pioneering skin grafts would follow. Bing Crosby, who was entertaining troops in Britain, came to visit. “He held my fingers and asked if I would like him to sing, so I chose White Christmas and Don’t Fence Me In because my mum liked those songs. But he was too upset to sing by our bedsides, so he went into the corridor and sang there.” Eight months after the air crash, VE Day passed unnoticed as Currell recovered in hospital. It was early 1946 before she returned to her village and her old school. “There wasn’t a family in Freckleton untouched by what happened,” she says. “So many bereaved parents. Some lost their only child and were too old to have more. I didn’t want to go back to that school, but it was only the infants’ classroom that was destroyed. The rest was undamaged, so I had to.” But the sound of thunder would fill her with fear: “If I heard it when I was walking in the village, I could go to the nearest door and they’d let me in because they all understood. They would give me a biscuit and a cup of tea, and send someone to get my mum.” “It makes me afraid, even to this day. It’s still very hard not to get frightened. The crash affected my whole life.”
102–year–old RAF veteran Stewart Taylor piloted a Dakota transport plane, serving in Europe and the Far East
The 80th anniversary of VE Day is on Thursday 8 May, but will be marked throughout the week from 5 May. Add VE Day 80 to your watchlist For almost an hour, 102-year-old Stewart Taylor has been recalling his time piloting Dakota transport aircraft in the Second World War. The memories come back thick and fast, often peppered with smiles. It’ s only when he reflects on the meaning of VE Day 80, and why remembrance matters so much, that the words are suddenly more difficult to find. “I have a list of 50 people,” he says slowly, tapping his temple. “Some I can’t name, but I can see their faces. Some I was at school with, some lived down the street, some I served with, some were whole crews.” His voice cracks as he struggles to get the words out, then finishes: “They never came back. Simple as that.” Taylor’s handshake is firm as he welcomes you into the Preston house where he lives entirely independently. Just back from a solo break driving to the Lake District in his camper van, close to where the RAF veteran sits is a photograph of himself with Kathleen, his wife for seven decades until her death nine years ago. They met in 1937 when he was 14 years old. “King George VI had made Lancaster, where I was born, a city to mark his coronation,” he says, smiling. “There was a pageant with local schoolchildren doing a tableau of Saxon times. We were at the back, a serf and serfette. We were told to mingle, so Kath and I mingled for 70-odd years.” The son of a factory foreman and a seamstress, Taylor left school at 15 before getting a job as a junior clerk in local government. In 1942, with war intensifying in Europe and Singapore falling to the Japanese, Taylor, then 19, joined the volunteer reserve. At that time the furthest he had been from home was 20 miles. By the end of 1946 he would see swathes of Canada, and journey through Libya, Iraq and the Indian sub-continent to reach Burma (now Myanmar), from where he would fly all over the Far East. “I’d never flown at all before the war, of course,” he says. “We had 12 hours’ flying training at boot camp in England before I was sent to Canada to join the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in early 1943.” The programme was created by the Allies to counter a shortage of pilots. “We took a six-day Atlantic crossing on a troop ship with no defensive convoy accompanying us, then a train to Calgary, where we trained in Tiger Moth biplanes near a field with bison roaming, before moving to Saskatchewan. Then it was Prince Edward Island on the eastern seaboard, supporting coastal patrols in the Gulf of St Lawrence and learning how to fix mines to drop on submarines.” It was 1944 before he docked back in Liverpool. But the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which produced some 50,000 pilots during the course of the war, was a victim of its own success. “There were too many of us,” says Taylor. D-Day had been and gone before he reached operational status. “I expected to be on Liberator bombers sweeping the North Sea for submarines. Instead, I was co-pilot on a Dakota with Air Transport Command.” As the Allies advanced through Europe, Air Transport Command was responsible for flying in troops, delivering essential supplies and evacuating wounded soldiers. “We were the lorries of the air, taking off every morning at 5am, crossing the Channel to make landings in France, Belgium and Holland, towing gliders, dropping parachutists, carrying supplies of ammunition, mail, the odd general. “I did three trips carrying in reinforcements for the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes [the last major offensive Hitler attempted on the Western Front] at the end of 1944. It was dangerous – we had no armaments and didn’t carry parachutes.” By VE Day he was training near Loughborough for a posting to Burma, to relieve crews who had been there for three years. “VE Day didn’t make a big difference to us because we were going to the Far East,” he says. “We were given a day off so we went for a pint or two in Loughborough.” He and Kathleen married on 4 August 1945, with Taylor on leave for his honeymoon in Chester when the Japanese surrendered 11 days later. But thousands of British troops remained in the Far East after VJ Day to manage military administrations in reconquered territories, repatriate prisoners of war and reoccupy Allied colonies, as well as providing food and supplies to colonial territories. “We had to go to keep the troops flying around and supplied, all in monsoon weather with no radar or oxygen. First I was based in Rangoon, then Singapore, flying all over the place – Hong Kong, Sumatra, Java, Thailand, Cambodia. We were flying supplies, mail and passengers, some diplomatic, some Gurkhas. A lot of what we did out there is forgotten now.” Taylor returned home in November 1946 to find his previous job as a clerk had been given to someone else; he retrained as a primary school teacher, ultimately becoming a headmaster. He and Kathleen had two children, and as he talks his great-grandsons are playing in the garden. “I thought I’d go back to the Loughborough pub for another pint on VE Day this time,” he says. “But it’s a branch of Lloyds Bank now.” Instead he’ll be at a reception in Lancaster, and watch as a beacon is lit in the city – one of more than 1,000 nationwide – to mark 80 years since the end of the war in Europe. “So many of the ones I knew who didn’t come back were air crew,” he says. “They’re who I’ll be thinking of.”
VE Day at 80: Stories of courage, sacrifice and survival
"So many of the ones I knew who didn't come back were air crew. They're who I'll be thinking of."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Stewart Taylor. The 102-year-old RAF veteran piloted a Dakota transport plane, serving in Europe and the Far East. For almost an hour, 102-year-old Stewart Taylor has been recalling his time piloting Dakota transport aircraft in the Second World War. The memories come back thick and fast, often peppered with smiles. It's only when he reflects on the meaning of VE Day 80, and why remembrance matters so much, that the words are suddenly more difficult to find. "I have a list of 50 people," he says slowly, tapping his temple. "Some I can't name, but I can see their faces. Some I was at school with, some lived down the street, some I served with, some were whole crews." His voice cracks as he struggles to get the words out, then finishes: "They never came back. Simple as that." Taylor's handshake is firm as he welcomes you into the Preston house where he lives entirely independently. Just back from a solo break driving to the Lake District in his camper van, close to where the RAF veteran sits is a photograph of himself with Kathleen, his wife for seven decades until her death nine years ago. They met in 1937 when he was 14 years old. "King George VI had made Lancaster, where I was born, a city to mark his coronation," he says, smiling. "There was a pageant with local schoolchildren doing a tableau of Saxon times. We were at the back, a serf and serfette. We were told to mingle, so Kath and I mingled for 70-odd years." The son of a factory foreman and a seamstress, Taylor left school at 15 before getting a job as a junior clerk in local government. In 1942, with war intensifying in Europe and Singapore falling to the Japanese, Taylor, then 19, joined the volunteer reserve. At that time the furthest he had been from home was 20 miles. By the end of 1946 he would see swathes of Canada, and journey through Libya, Iraq and the Indian sub-continent to reach Burma (now Myanmar), from where he would fly all over the Far East. "I’d never flown at all before the war, of course," he says. "We had 12 hours' flying training at boot camp in England before I was sent to Canada to join the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in early 1943." The programme was created by the Allies to counter a shortage of pilots. "We took a six-day Atlantic crossing on a troop ship with no defensive convoy accompanying us, then a train to Calgary, where we trained in Tiger Moth biplanes near a field with bison roaming, before moving to Saskatchewan. Then it was Prince Edward Island on the eastern seaboard, supporting coastal patrols in the Gulf of St Lawrence and learning how to fix mines to drop on submarines." It was 1944 before he docked back in Liverpool. But the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which produced some 50,000 pilots during the course of the war, was a victim of its own success. "There were too many of us," says Taylor. D-Day had been and gone before he reached operational status. "I expected to be on Liberator bombers sweeping the North Sea for submarines. Instead, I was co-pilot on a Dakota with Air Transport Command." As the Allies advanced through Europe, Air Transport Command was responsible for flying in troops, delivering essential supplies and evacuating wounded soldiers. "We were the lorries of the air, taking off every morning at 5am, crossing the Channel to make landings in France, Belgium and Holland, towing gliders, dropping parachutists, carrying supplies of ammunition, mail, the odd general. "I did three trips carrying in reinforcements for the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes [the last major offensive Hitler attempted on the Western Front] at the end of 1944. It was dangerous – we had no armaments and didn’t carry parachutes." By VE Day he was training near Loughborough for a posting to Burma, to relieve crews who had been there for three years. "VE Day didn’t make a big difference to us because we were going to the Far East," he says. "We were given a day off so we went for a pint or two in Loughborough." He and Kathleen married on 4th August 1945, with Taylor on leave for his honeymoon in Chester when the Japanese surrendered 11 days later. But thousands of British troops remained in the Far East after VJ Day to manage military administrations in reconquered territories, repatriate prisoners of war and reoccupy Allied colonies, as well as providing food and supplies to colonial territories. "We had to go to keep the troops flying around and supplied, all in monsoon weather with no radar or oxygen. First I was based in Rangoon, then Singapore, flying all over the place – Hong Kong, Sumatra, Java, Thailand, Cambodia. We were flying supplies, mail and passengers, some diplomatic, some Gurkhas. A lot of what we did out there is forgotten now." Taylor returned home in November 1946 to find his previous job as a clerk had been given to someone else; he retrained as a primary school teacher, ultimately becoming a headmaster. He and Kathleen had two children, and as he talks his great-grandsons are playing in the garden. "I thought I’d go back to the Loughborough pub for another pint on VE Day this time," he says. "But it’s a branch of Lloyds Bank now." Instead he’ll be at a reception in Lancaster, and watch as a beacon is lit in the city – one of more than 1,000 nationwide – to mark 80 years since the end of the war in Europe. "So many of the ones I knew who didn’t come back were air crew," he says. "They're who I’ll be thinking of." The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. Visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what else is on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
"The hell I saw will never leave me" – The cameraman who exposed Bergen-Belsen's true horrors
How a cameraman accompanying troops liberating Bergen-Belsen revealed its full horrors to the world.
The Second World War experiences of British Army Sergeant Mike Lewis can be defined in two chapters, before and after 15th April 1945, the date he became an eyewitness to atrocity. Among a unit sent to film and photograph what he’d been told was a camp, with an outbreak of typhus, for political prisoners and criminals being handed over to the British under a truce agreed with German officers, Lewis characterised what they found as "a different planet, a different Earth – a hell". Lewis – a paratrooper with the Army Film and Photographic Unit – and his fellow soldiers from the British 11th Armoured Division literally could not comprehend what they were seeing when they entered Bergen-Belsen, to find nearly 60,000 half-starved prisoners, and another 10,000 rotting corpses lying around the camp unburied. By then 50,000 others had already died there. For ten days after 15th April, it was the task of Sergeant Lewis and his colleague Sergeant Bill Lawrie to capture on film the indescribable horror of the Nazi concentration camp. Now the Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes, alongside executive producers including David Baddiel, has created a documentary marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation, chronicling the silent footage shot by Lewis and Lawrie, accompanied by archive oral interviews with the two soldiers recorded in the 1980s. Mendes’s spare, and unsparing, treatment of the material is perfectly judged. No embellishment could add depth or context, either to the footage or the cameramen’s description of having to film it. Historian Dr Helen Lewis, daughter of Sgt Lewis, is proud that their testimonies are heard. Lewis was parachuted into Arnhem carrying a pistol and a cine camera to document military operations as part of AFPU Number 5 Unit Europe. "The AFPU was almost invisible," she says. "After the war, the footage they took was handed to the Imperial War Museum and was used again and again in documentaries – but the men were never credited, only the Museum. I found that really problematic. So I wrote a book to highlight their experiences at Belsen." The title she chose, The Dead Still Cry Out, was a phrase her father used to capture the memories that crowded his mind, right up until his death in 1986 at the age of 69. "I knew the camera had pushed the reality of the sights away from me and protected me from it,” he said in 1985. "When I left Belsen, I wanted to forget. After 40 years, I know I will never forget, that the hell I saw will never leave me." Lewis – who had fought in North Africa and been wounded twice - was Jewish: his parents escaped the early 20th-century pogroms in Poland by fleeing to London in their late teens. But Britain itself was not free of anti-Semitism, and the family name Weissenberg - Mike changed his surname to Lewis - was a potential barrier to employment. Lewis was attacked by supporters of British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley after attending a rally held after the Battle of Cable Street. Even in the army he was singled out, discovering that fellow soldiers placed bets against him completing the necessary seven training jumps to become a paratrooper, simply because he was Jewish. "He found it difficult to understand and very hurtful," says Helen Lewis. "But it was only after Belsen that he understood the depth of truth in his parents’ stories of the Polish pogroms. Belsen altered his world view and affected him very deeply for the rest of his life." Having written a PhD thesis on her father’s experiences as a combat cameraman, she has presented conference papers in Australia (where she has lived for almost 50 years) and overseas on the ethics of disseminating images of atrocity. "Some people felt the images and footage taken by my father should not be seen or shown, on the basis that it re-victimised people who were already victims," she says. "Even my father didn’t think the film should be widely shown. He didn’t like the idea of showing horror pictures, but he said that if it could make a difference, then it should be. "Back in the 1980s when he recorded the interviews about Belsen, my understanding of what he went through was superficial. It mortifies me now. He was so overcome. He said, ‘Why do I have to keep telling this over and over again? Isn’t it enough that I took the film?’ But I think he knew it was a story that needed to be told." What They Found airs on Monday 7th April at 10pm on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer. Check out more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
'I thought he was resting in peace and now it feels he isn’t'
Professor Sue Black wants justice for the British PoWs whose organs were removed by the Nazis
Shadow of War: a Tainted Anatomy is on Radio 4 on Tuesday 21 January at 8pm. Add it to your collection now In her study at Oxford University, Professor Sue Black is pondering the long shadow of war that has defined her career. “I’ve spent a lifetime working with the dead,” says the globally recognised forensic anthropologist, whose work for the Government and United Nations has helped identify victims of conficts in Kosovo and Iraq, and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 228,000 people. She is such an authority in her field that she has more awards than can be listed, including a life peerage as Baroness Black of Strome. “You may never have known a forebear but they are part of you,” she goes on to say. “Events may be in the past, but the ripples in the pond go on for ever.” Such inter-generational trauma is apparent in her remarkable programme for Radio 4. Shadow of War: a Tainted Anatomy investigates how five British soldiers who died in German prisoner-of-war camps in 1941 had their brains removed during autopsy, by order of the Nazis – a distressing fact of which their families were unaware until as recently as last year. Some must now live with the knowledge that there is no record of what happened to their relations’ human tissue; others have learnt that their forebears’ brains became part of a gigantic archive in Munich for many decades. “I don’t know how to express how angry I am,” says Tracy Wilson. Her great-uncle Joseph Elston died from dysentery, and his grave is among the 3,595 at the Berlin Commonwealth War Cemetery. But it was only in recent months that she learnt his brain was removed during autopsy, and that there is no information on what was done with it. “It’s criminal,” she says. “I thought he was resting in peace and now it feels that he isn’t.” Professor Black explains that these unauthorised autopsies were the medical norm in 1941. “Consent is a relatively recent concept, especially around the retention of human tissue,” she says. “In the 1940s there wasn’t the same sentiment towards the whole of the body being kept together. It was their professional right to take samples, and either retain them or dispose of them as clinical waste.” British laws were only passed in 2004 as a result of the Alder Hey scandal, in which whole organs had been secretly removed from children who had died at the Liverpool hospital. But in the case of the British PoWs, the 1990 reunification of Germany Listen prompted ethical decisions regarding the giant archive of human tissue about which Professor Black is scathing. “With the reunification approaching, there was a rush from the authorities to solve the problem and move on. What they did reeked of a lack of respect – cramming thousands of name-labelled glass slides into metal boxes and then burying them en masse without ceremony. No one in my world would have allowed that to happen. “Explaining to families and giving them the decision would have given them closure. Concealment will always cause the loss of faith and trust. It was no surprise that another box of slides was found later, and we can’t be certain there aren’t more somewhere.” The PoWs’ families only came to be informed as the result of an international project (in which Professor Black herself is not involved) examining records of thousands of brains stockpiled at the Max Planck Society (formerly the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute) in Munich. “Telling victims’ families the truth allows the processing of grief and, in the horrible American word, closure,” she says. “But the families were unaware they were not already at the point of closure. The last thing you want is to cause pain but we don’t have the right to suppress information.” Yet amid so much trauma, there is another story. Medical research postmortem is a powerful tool for good. In the UK, around 1,300 people donate their body to science each year. Would she encourage more? “I absolutely believe in it. My own bequeathal form has been signed, this is what I want and my family knows it. Without that, it wouldn’t happen. “I want every little bit of me to be dissected by science students. We call the cadavers our silent teachers. If I can transfer knowledge of my anatomy to these young people, they are the ones who will go on to cure things and make the world a better place.”
Martin Lewis reveals how to beat your family at Monopoly this Christmas
Martin Lewis is obsessed with board games – after all he did propose to his wife using Scrabble! This Christmas, the Money Saving Expert has set himself a festive mission: helping the nation at beating family and friends this Christmas at board games, just like he does! So if you fancy your chances at reigning supreme at Monopoly, Scrabble or perhaps Articulate, Martin Lewis has the best tips for you. This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. How have board games survived the rise of screens and online gaming? They bring people together in communal social engagement. In my Christmas TV show I play backgammon against a 90-year-old man who's played seven days a week for decades. His sharpness shows how board games are a secret weapon against old age. Why do you love board games? I’m ferociously competitive. I even proposed to my wife Lara playing Scrabble. I cheated – the only time I’ll ever admit to it – to be sure of going first. Then I put down two seven-letter words, "willyou" and "marryme". She loved it. Does your financial savvy mean you always want to be the banker in Monopoly? I generally am the banker, although it’s good to let young kids have that job to learn the numeracy skills of counting and giving change. But Monopoly and money are only loosely connected… Do you mind losing? Not if I’ve played well. I keep a graph of every Scrabble game I’ve ever played against my wife – about 1,200 times now. If I win with a low score where I think I’ve played below potential, I’m really peed off with myself. It’s the same if I play my friend Joel at Connect 4 and he beats me because I missed something. Are there life lessons to be learnt from board games? Rather than just teach my 12-year-old daughter the rules, I've taught her strategy, tactics, evaluating and planning – such good tools. In the programme, other children use that applied knowledge as they try to beat their teachers at Connect 4. The kids really improve their game play by thinking about what their opponent is doing. What's your top Monopoly tip? Orange properties should be your number one target, for the sweet-spot combination of rent return on investment and the higher probability of landing on them in the first place. The Christmas double issue of Radio Times is out now – order your copy here. Martin Lewis: How to Win at Board Games airs Tuesday 17th December at 8pm on ITV1 and ITVX. Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Roy Quinton lost friends and saw untold horrors during the assault on Monte Cassino in Italy – but it also gave him the gift of happiness and his wife, Irene
Add Remembrance Sunday: the Cenotaph to your watchlist Roy Quinton loves Italy – “the people, the climate, the landscape, the history… all of it”. He met his wife there and they even named their house on the fringes of south London Casa Laerta, Latin for ‘happy house’, in acknowledgment of the country that has proved so significant in both their lives. However, his passion for the country took root not on some relaxing holiday, but throughout the three years he served there during and after the Second World War. As part of the 2nd Army Group Royal Artillery, Gunner Roy Quinton fought at the Battle of Monte Cassino, the four-month assault on key German lines in early 1944, which paved the way for the liberation of Rome, but came at the cost of 55,000 Allied lives, including 8,000 British soldiers. Eight decades on, sitting comfortably in his warm kitchen, the veteran soldier recalls running under fire through the rubble-strewn landscape surrounding the ancient mountaintop Benedictine abbey. “I had been trained in signals,” says Roy, who is now 101 years old. “My job was to maintain communications, which meant repairing wires during pauses in German shelling. But still we were under fire and it was very frightening trying to find cover. “The sound of it was terrible. You’d hear the whooshing whistle of the approach, then it would go quiet before the massive crash of the shell and all the shrapnel flying. There were casualties all around but none in my platoon. God was favouring us.” Roy’s memories of Monte Cassino will be part of a special commemorative segment about the Battle during this year’s Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance at the Albert Hall, which will be shown live on Saturday night on BBC1. “I remember looking up at the sky and seeing the monastery crumble as it was hit by bombs during the battle,” he says. When Roy was called up, he was just 18, the son of a wealthy clothing retailer. “I was spoiled rotten,” he admits. “I wanted to go to university and study languages. They were always my strong point.” But the war intervened. After basic training, in January 1943 his platoon boarded a ship for Algiers, spending 11 “terrifying” days weaving around the Bay of Biscay. Their immediate priority was to evade the German U-boats lying in wait to torpedo Allied craft heading for the North African campaign, by then in its latter stages. On landfall, the platoon headed east to Tunisia and Roy’s first experience of action. “I ran messages for the officers, almost getting run over by a tank – and I was terrified of mines. I stood on one and heard a click – but it hadn’t been primed. “Some things stay with you. Once I saw nine enemy machine gunners, all lying dead, blood pouring out of them, their wounds opening up like flowers in the sun. You never forget.” In September 1943 Roy’s platoon crossed the Mediterranean to Italy. Sicily had fallen and now the mainland itself was the crucial objective. Yet, although this was among the most costly fighting of the Allies’ campaign, those who saw combat in Italy felt overlooked as “the forgotten forces” in comparison with those who took part in the Normandy landings of 1944. At the time they were even referred to as “D-Day Dodgers”, something the troops themselves responded to with the creation of a savagely ironic song. “Oh yes, we used to sing that,” says Roy, nodding at the memory of the lyrics sung to the tune of Lili Marlene: ‘Look round the mountains through the mud and rain/You’ll find crosses, some which bear no name/Heartbreak and toil and suffering gone/The boys beneath them slumber on/The D-Day Dodgers who’ll stay in Italy.’ After Monte Cassino Roy’s platoon moved north to Rome, before continuing to Perugia where he met Irene, the daughter of the local station master. By then he was fluent in Italian, “learning the language to take my mind off the dangers all around”. However, peril was ever present. In the last months of the war, he narrowly avoided being hit by a shell. “My pal was lying on the ground in a terrible state,” he remembers. “Shrapnel had hit him in the chest. I said, ‘You’re going to be all right lad, you’re going to go back to England.’ He found the strength to tell me that it didn’t matter to him because that very day he had received a letter from home telling him his wife had gone off with somebody else. He died in the ambulance on the way to the military hospital.” Returning to London in 1946, Roy joined the Inland Revenue, later creating his own tax consultancy. He and Irene made their home in their “happy house”, and their three sons gave them seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. The couple holidayed in Italy several times a year until they were in their eighties. Then this summer, after 78 years of marriage, Irene died at the age of 99. “I’m so lonely without her,” says Roy. “I would like to go to Italy once more, if I can.” Back to the place that, against all odds, brought him terror and loss, but also so much that he has loved.
Channel 4 News' Washington Correspondent, Siobhan Kennedy, has ruffled feathers…
Add America Decides: US Presidential Election to your watchlist How would you describe the campaign so far? Utterly chaotic. I have four boys between eight and 15, so I couldn’t manage without an incredibly forgiving husband. He does everything. Your most jaw-dropping moment? The first attempt to assassinate Trump. We’d snuck away for the weekend to a lake in Virginia. I was in my swimming costume when my 15-year-old called out: “Mum! Someone’s just tried to kill Donald Trump!” Can you ever switch off? On a Saturday I’m the all-American soccer mom but my phone is constantly buzzing. If something happens, I hoof it to the nearest airport. I practically live in drive-throughs. When will the election be over for you? Do you have a holiday booked before the 20 January inauguration? Oh God, no, not with Trump already signalling that if it’s lost, it’s stolen. People are predicting chaos and localised violence. Do you get much social media abuse? An awful lot on X. If you ask a challenging question at a Trump event, you’ll get screamed at for being “fake media”. Can US politics ever reset to the calmer previous ways? Half of America hopes for a return to “‘normalcy”. But the Trumps are a dynasty and Don Jr will have political ambitions
Sarah Smith, the BBC’s North America editor is ready for an “off the charts” election
Add the US Election 2024 Results Night to your watchlist Ask Sarah Smith to sum up the 2024 US Presidential election and she doesn’t hesitate. “Off the charts,” says the BBC’s North America editor. “In 2008 I was Washington correspondent for Channel 4 News, so I was here for Barack Obama’s win, and that seemed remarkable. But this… “Who would have thought Donald Trump would be convicted of 34 felonies, and increase his popularity as a result? Then came the BidenTrump debate – nothing was more jaw-dropping than that, watching a 50-year political career falling apart in front of me.” As she continues to list the events that have occurred since the end of May, it’s a reminder of how extraordinary it has all been. “Next there was the first Trump assassination attempt – I was lying on the sofa on a day off watching Netflix when I got a WhatsApp saying ‘Trump’s been shot’. Right after that we had the febrile Republican convention, where delegates believed literal divine intervention had saved their Messiah for them. “Then Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid and Kamala Harris took over just ahead of the Democratic convention, before the second Trump assassination attempt. That day I was at a friend’s for a very jolly Sunday lunch, about to pour my second glass of wine, when someone glanced at their phone and said: ‘Someone’s tried to shoot Trump again’. Just the most astonishing year.” On a rare day off from campaign coverage – she’s usually following one of the two candidates, or seeking voters’ views in the seven key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Smith is at home in Washington DC. She is speaking via Teams from her large, bright sitting room, with what looks like a period fireplace and comfortable antique furniture behind her. Sunlight is streaming through the windows, the pleasant autumn warmth a welcome contrast to the humid Washington summer. As we talk she has just recorded an episode of Americast, the BBC’s podcast on US news and politics, and throughout our conversation, her manner is much like talking with a friend – funny and self-deprecating but also focused and engaged. “The time difference definitely makes the job more challenging,” she says. “I wake up at 6.30am, five hours b e h i n d L o n d o n , always to a ton of waiting emails. Doing a report for the early evening Six O’Clock News can be a right old scramble – if I’m in Arizona, that’s 10am my time. “We have to be alert to AI and fake news. Disinformation is a huge part of this campaign. I’ve spoken to voters who say it’s true that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs because they have seen it on TikTok,” she says, referencing Trump’s baseless claim about residents of Springfield, Ohio, denied by local officials. It sounds exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure, and there’s one home comfort that’s vital to keeping Smith going on the road. “I always take my portable kettle, some Tetley teabags and a mug. Then I buy some real milk, not that half-and-half cream stuff you get here, so that I can have practically intravenous continuous cups of tea. “On days off I like to get outside into the amazing countryside around Washington. I’m booked in every Saturday for pilates, which is cancelled half the time when a story breaks. There’s also a marvellous farmers’ market near me on a Sunday, although then I’ll get on a plane that afternoon and realise everything I bought is going to rot while I’m away.” Smith met her husband of 17 years, Simon Conway, through his sister and they were married within a year. He is a director with the Halo Trust charity, which works to clear landmines in countries recovering from conflict. “He is currently based in the South Pacific,” she says. “Neither of us complains about the other being away. We’re used to it.” As one of three daughters of the late Labour leader John Smith, who died in 1994 aged 55, she is also used to the public gaze. Her sister Catherine, a lawyer, has just become Baroness Smith of Cluny through her appointment in August as Advocate General for Scotland. Sarah proudly posted an image on X of Catherine’s introduction to the House of Lords alongside their 84-year-old mother Elizabeth, who has been Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill since 1995. Smith herself took up her own current role at the start of 2022, following eight years as the BBC’s Scotland editor. Has living in the US changed her? “It’s made me fatter,” she says, ruefully. “It’s known as The 10lb Posting and I’ve put on at least that.” Meanwhile, Tuesday 5 November – polling day – looms. “I’ll be up from 6am until 6pm the next day, so 36 hours straight,” she says. “I want to be based wherever the winning candidate is, but it’s a gamble who that will be. Wherever you see me, is where I thought the victory was going to be and you will be able to see how wrong I was when the results start coming in. “It’s going to be so tight that I suspect we will not get a definitive result on the night. If Harris wins, Trump will not accept it. There will be an extraordinary number of legal challenges. Briefs are already prepared, ready to flee. Trump’s team will be much better prepared this time than four years ago, and their attempts will last longer. “We could still be in a legal mire by the inauguration on 20 January – in which case I’ve no idea what happens, because it’s been mandated in the US Constitution since 1933 that the President is sworn in on that date.” She shakes her head again, hands spread. So many extraordinary chapters already in this election, with clearly many more yet to come.
BBC's Sarah Smith: 'Trump will not concede' and other predictions for 2024
"It's going to be so tight that I suspect we will not get a definitive result on the night."
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Ask Sarah Smith to sum up the 2024 US Presidential election and she doesn’t hesitate. "Off the charts," says the BBC’s North America editor. "In 2008 I was Washington correspondent for Channel 4 News, so I was here for Barack Obama’s win, and that seemed remarkable. But this… "Who would have thought Donald Trump would be convicted of 34 felonies, and increase his popularity as a result? Then came the Biden-Trump debate – nothing was more jaw-dropping than that, watching a 50-year political career falling apart in front of me." As she continues to list the events that have occurred since the end of May, it’s a reminder of how extraordinary it has all been. "Next there was the first Trump assassination attempt – I was lying on the sofa on a day off watching Netflix when I got a WhatsApp saying 'Trump’s been shot'. Right after that we had the febrile Republican convention, where delegates believed literal divine intervention had saved their messiah for them. "Then Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid and Kamala Harris took over just ahead of the Democratic convention, before the second Trump assassination attempt. That day I was at a friend’s for a very jolly Sunday lunch, about to pour my second glass of wine, when someone glanced at their phone and said: 'Someone’s tried to shoot Trump again.' Just the most astonishing year." On a rare day off from campaign coverage – she’s usually following one of the two candidates, or seeking voters’ views in the seven key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Smith is at home in Washington DC. View oEmbed on the source website She is speaking via Teams from her large, bright sitting room, with what looks like a period fireplace and comfortable antique furniture behind her. Sunlight is streaming through the windows, the pleasant autumn warmth a welcome contrast to the humid Washington summer. As we talk she has just recorded an episode of Americast, the BBC’s podcast on US news and politics, and throughout our conversation, her manner is much like talking with a friend – funny and self-deprecating but also focused and engaged. "The time difference definitely makes the job more challenging," she says. "I wake up at 6:30am, five hours behind London, always to a ton of waiting emails. Doing a report for the early evening Six O'Clock News can be a right old scramble – if I’m in Arizona, that’s 10am my time. "We have to be alert to AI and fake news. Disinformation is a huge part of this campaign. I’ve spoken to voters who say it’s true that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs because they have seen it on TikTok," she says, referencing Trump’s baseless claim about residents of Springfield, Ohio, denied by local officials. It sounds exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure, and there’s one home comfort that’s vital to keeping Smith going on the road. "I always take my portable kettle, some Tetley teabags and a mug. Then I buy some real milk, not that half-and-half cream stuff you get here, so that I can have practically intravenous continuous cups of tea. "On days off I like to get outside into the amazing countryside around Washington. I’m booked in every Saturday for pilates, which is cancelled half the time when a story breaks. There’s also a marvellous farmers’ market near me on a Sunday, although then I’ll get on a plane that afternoon and realise everything I bought is going to rot while I’m away." Smith met her husband of 17 years, Simon Conway, through his sister and they were married within a year. He is a director with the Halo Trust charity, which works to clear landmines in countries recovering from conflict. "He is currently based in the South Pacific," she says. "Neither of us complains about the other being away. We’re used to it." View oEmbed on the source website As one of three daughters of the late Labour leader John Smith, who died in 1994 aged 55, she is also used to the public gaze. Her sister Catherine, a lawyer, has just become Baroness Smith of Cluny through her appointment in August as Advocate General for Scotland. Sarah proudly posted an image on X of Catherine’s introduction to the House of Lords alongside their 84-year-old mother Elizabeth, who has been Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill since 1995. Smith herself took up her own current role at the start of 2022, following eight years as the BBC’s Scotland editor. Has living in the US changed her? "It’s made me fatter," she says, ruefully. "It’s known as The 10lb Posting and I’ve put on at least that." Meanwhile, Tuesday 5th November – polling day – looms. "I’ll be up from 6am until 6pm the next day, so 36 hours straight," she says. "I want to be based wherever the winning candidate is, but it’s a gamble who that will be. Wherever you see me, is where I thought the victory was going to be and you will be able to see how wrong I was when the results start coming in. "It’s going to be so tight that I suspect we will not get a definitive result on the night. If Harris wins, Trump will not accept it. There will be an extraordinary number of legal challenges. Briefs are already prepared, ready to file. Trump’s team will be much better prepared this time than four years ago, and their attempts will last longer. "We could still be in a legal mire by the inauguration on 20th January – in which case I’ve no idea what happens, because it’s been mandated in the US Constitution since 1933 that the president is sworn in on that date." She shakes her head again, hands spread. So many extraordinary chapters already in this election, with clearly many more yet to come. The latest issue of Radio Times is out now – subscribe here. 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Following Nicola Bulley’s disappearance, social media “sleuths” added to her family’s agony. Now they want to tell her story…
For 23 days during her disappearance at the start of last year, the loved ones of Nicola Bulley faced a social media onslaught. Self-appointed “sleuths” arrived in their neighbourhood, not only scouring gardens and private land around the riverside path where she was last seen, but digging for her body, while broadcasting themselves live on TikTok. Paul Ansell, Nicola’s frantic partner of 12 years and the father of her children, desperately hoped she’d walk through their front door. The 45-year-old had not returned home after dropping their two daughters, then aged nine and six, at school in the village of St Michael’s on Wyre and going on her usual riverside dog walk. Lancashire Police believed that Nicola – whose phone was found on a bench, still connected to a work call, with her springer spaniel Willow close by – had fallen into the river. But with no evidence of suspicious activity or third party involvement and extensive searches involving divers, helicopters, sniffer dogs and drones finding nothing, a vacuum ensued. Thousands of social media commentators notched up clicks by sharing baseless theories. Paul was accused by TikTokers, who chose to ignore every established fact, of murdering her. While desperate for news of Nicola and trying to care for his two children amid their mother’s disappearance on 27 January 2023, he received direct abuse on his phone. Now Paul, along with Nicola’s heartbroken parents Ernie and Dot, and her sister Louise Cunningham, have participated in a moving documentary, The Search for Nicola Bulley, which takes viewers through the period in which her family desperately waited for news before her body was finally found. “We wanted to do this for Nikki,” say the family in a collective statement. “Only we can speak about her as a mummy, partner, daughter and sister... Our sole aim is to ensure Nikki has the legacy she deserves.” “The family tell their story in their own words, unfiltered,” says director Rachel Lob-levyt. “So much of what happened to them was about the exposure of their lives to the public.” Have they seen the film? “We had a viewing with the family. It was difficult – obviously emotional for them. They feel the documentary really honours their experience, and honours Nikki. “At the time she went missing, Paul was subject to a really difficult level of scrutiny. The idea of putting himself back in the public eye is nerve-racking but ultimately, he thought it the right thing to do. The social media sleuths felt entitled to say whatever they wanted. In the past we’d have talked about these things in the pub, whereas now people broadcast it online and everything is accelerated. Opinion takes on similar weight to verified information.” With the public’s fascination with Nicola having added to the family’s agony, Lob-levyt acknowledges it’s reasonable to ask how they hope viewers of the documentary will differ from those who followed every move on social media at the time of her disappearance. “That’s a good question,” she says. “What hasn’t been done is people listening to the family, and to some extent the police, the media and the social media commentators. It’s only when you hear what that was really like that you understand what happened, and can learn from it.” While the investigation was ongoing, the police’s poor media communication – including revealing private details of Nicola’s struggles with perimenopause and alcohol – only fuelled fevered speculation. Even when her body was eventually found a mile downstream on 19 February, members of the public (not journalists) crossed police cordons to take photos of her. One man was arrested after videoing the removal of her body from the river, to use on his social media. The inquest in June last year found that Nicola died from drowning as a result of cold water shock, after accidentally falling in the river. While the frenzy abated, some have continued to perpetuate theories online. The documentary also features interviews with some social media commentators, to “fully understand why events took the course they did,” says Lob-levyt. But what shines through the programme is love, everyone’s love for Nicola, and the love shared between Paul, Nicola’s parents and her sister. “I met them around a dozen times and it was so apparent from the start that they really care for him,” says Lob-levyt. “Looking after their girls is a huge focus of Paul’s life now, with the support of Ernie, Dot and Louise. He’s coping. There will always be sadness in their lives because of her loss. But the care and warmth they give each other have created strength, which has got them through this time.”
Kim Cattrall is giving her voice to pioneering intelligence officer Eloise Page, the USA’s first female spy in a male-dominated world
Central Intelligence will be on BBC sounds from Friday 13 September and is on Radio 4 at 2.15pm. Add it to your collection. The acronym CIA is so well known that it sometimes feels as if the foreign intelligence service of the United States government must have been around for ever. But in fact, the Central Intelligence Group, as it was initially named, was founded two years after the Second World War ended, when it was tasked with gathering, processing and analysing global security information through intelligence and covert action. Now, an award-winning team has created Central Intelligence, a ten-part Radio 4 drama (available as a box set on BBC Sounds from Friday) charting the inside story of the CIA from its earliest days. Starring Kim Cattrall, it’s told from the perspective of Eloise Page, who joined on the agency’s first day in 1947 and became one of its most powerful women. It portrays her working relationships with early CIA leaders Allen Dulles (Ed Harris) and Richard Helms (Johnny Flynn) in an organisation that was for a long time run by a “pale, male and Yale” hierarchy of men, whose decisions – good and bad – shaped modern history. “This is a human story full of false starts, gaffes, blunders, and, thankfully, triumphs – a thrilling story of Russian roulette,” says Cattrall. The writer of the piece is the Australian Greg Haddrick, whose curiosity was sparked by his work on the 2018 Netflix drama Pine Gap, a political thriller about the Australian-American intelligence facility outside Alice Springs. “The intelligence people I spoke to for Pine Gap said that it’s amazing what’s on open source if you know where to look for it,” says Haddrick. “That led me to Eloise Page, who was clearly fascinating, even though there was comparatively little information about her. “In the beginning, the CIA was a blokes’ world. The women were better at hiding themselves than the men, who couldn’t stop talking. Eloise was in the shadows much of the time, which gave a lot of scope for drama.” Needless to say, Haddrick is thrilled to have Cattrall, Harris and Flynn bringing his words to life. “I was completely bowled over,” he says, shaking his head. “Kim as Eloise has a lot to carry and I’m so impressed with how she owned that character, sounding both contemporary and yet giving the gravitas of the time.” Haddrick agrees that the series focuses heavily on CIA failures, although his reason for that is straightforward. “They had more failures than successes in the early years,” he explains. “In the late 1940s the Americans were new at this game. If we come back for returning series, you’ll see how they got better at covert operations, learning from their mistakes. But it was a rocky road – and of course successes tend to be less obvious. “Many moments and lines sprinkled through it are verbatim from sources – but whether those sources are right, you don’t really know. I’ve learnt that if something is said that sounds outlandish, it’s almost certainly true. The more outrageous something seems to be , the likelier it is I haven’t made it up. “There’s a line quoted by four or five different sources – ‘If he’s not a Communist, he’ll do until one comes along’. I have Allen Dulles say this, even though he didn’t. But he agreed with it as it was a broad idea held by many in the CIA.” Ultimately, Haddrick is certainly clear that the CIA is a force for good. “Since 9/11 their management of the information they hold has matured a lot – for example, Joe Biden releasing intelligence to Ukraine warning Russia was about to invade. “In the early days the motive was, ‘We have to stop Russia and aren’t we exceptional.’ They ended up with a victory but at an enormous cost. One of the things the show is trying to say is that the cost of those operations between the 1940s and the 1960s is still with us. “Australians are like the British – we’re the little brother who can poke the big brother and say, ‘Don’t think you’re that cool. You’ve stuffed up along the way.’”
From playing the part to living it: a new documentary shows how Volodymyr Zelensky went from comedy star to wartime leader
Add The Zelensky Story to your watchlist. It’s perhaps unheard of for a documentary profiling a globally famous politician to commence with footage of them on the lavatory. But the opening of the BBC’s three-part documentary series on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky does exactly that, featuring excerpts from his 2015 comedy series Servant of the People. It’s a reminder of Zelensky’s incredible metamorphosis, from comedy actor to wartime leader. “Before we started making the documentary, I knew the bare bones – that a comedian who played the President of Ukraine had become the President of Ukraine,” says British director Michael Waldman, who won a Bafta for his behind-the-scenes series The House about the Royal Opera House. “But I had no idea of the richness and complexity of his story. “He is the most significant figure on our planet at the moment, at the epicentre of a huge geopolitical and military storm affecting all the world. But if Ukraine was a small and obscure country that was not at war, his would still be an amazing story.” The Zelensky Story illuminates how a TV entertainer – who won his nation’s version of Strictly Come Dancing, was the voice of Paddington Bear in the Ukrainian versions of the Paddington films and whose character inadvertently became President of Ukraine in the comedy Servant of the People – not only became President, but an inspirational leader against Vladimir Putin’s invading Russian forces. It could scarcely be timelier. The recent cross-border attack in Kursk is the largest incursion on Russian territory by Ukrainian forces since the war began in February 2022. Some observers are describing it as Zelensky’s riskiest decision yet. For Waldman, getting access to Zelensky was “incredibly complicated”. He forged a relationship with Zelensky’s ‘gatekeeper’ Deputy Head of Office, Olena Kovalska, but it was a while before an interview with the President was permitted. “We were allowed 25 minutes and he gave us 50,” says Waldman happily. “I was worried that he would speak Ukrainian and say nothing other than ‘Give me more missiles, Western leaders’, as if we were a megaphone for him. But in fact, he spoke English and was very relaxed, personal, funny and apparently genuine.” Along with interviews with Zelensky and his wife Olena, the documentary features ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, former Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, former UK defence secretary Ben Wallace and Ukrainian film producer Alexander Rodnyansky, who first met Zelensky more than 20 years ago. The Oscar-nominated producer was a judge on the hugely popular talent show KVN when Zelensky made his first appearance. “He made a very strong impression on everyone who met him,” recalls Rodnyansky. “He was a natural born leader, even among the very talented people around him. He had a charisma and was very easy to like. He loved to be liked… He believed in his own talent and was very successful.” With Zelensky evolving into a high-profile satirist, Servant of the People captured the national mood so perfectly that in 2018 a political party named after the television series was registered. Vasily Petrovych Goloborodko, the character he played, made it his mission to weed out corruption by the government oligarchy. “Servant of the People was the centuries-old dream of all good Ukrainians – an ordinary person in power replaces our usual corrupt bureaucrats,” says Rodnyansky. “It made Zelensky so successful and loved, I never expected him to sacrifice all that comfort. “But being president [he was elected in 2019] before the war was hard for him. I believe he over-estimated his abilities and those of his team. He made promises which turned out to be unrealistic, pledging reforms he never delivered. He was losing popularity. No one doubted his honesty and good intentions but people were questioning his competence.” The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was the making of Zelensky. “It changed him completely,” says Rodnyanksy, who even now speaks with the President every few months. “He became more mature and serious, angrier, more resilient. It gave him new purpose. “What surprised me was his ability to lead in a time of war, his courage and determination. I never expected him to inspire millions to work together, believing in the future. He risked his life, staying with his country, doing everything humanly possible to help Ukraine.” Waldman says he was “expecting someone more conventionally statesmanlike” when he arrived in Ukraine to film. “Of course he’s a politician and knows what he’s doing. But he comes across well. I felt an authenticity to him. “I would be naive if I thought he doesn’t calculate his effect on people, whether in interviews or addressing parliaments or talking to his nation; but there is a sincerity to it. He believes what he’s saying. I can’t believe that when he was still working in television, he didn’t have an ego… But watching him with the people around him, he gave no sense of arrogance or patronising distance. He was completely charming.” Waldman was also able to interview First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska who was at school and university with her husband, with whom she has two children. “The President told me I was spending more time with her than he was,” grins Waldman. “She was unsmiling at first and it was all quite frosty. Then I said something borderline cheeky that amused her. She’s a sophisticated woman, used to sycophants. It worked. “She’s very sharp, clever, funny, modest. It was not her ambition to be First Lady – she told me she hoped he would lose the election – but there’s a steeliness. You wouldn’t want to cross her. She only discovered her husband was running for the presidency when he announced it on television. She told me of the anger she felt. But their relationship survived it.” In the documentary there is also a great sadness to her, as if she wishes their life had taken another path. “Without question,” agrees Waldman. “She feels the weight of what is happening differently to him. They are both very tired.” Patently, Zelensky made a profound impression on the programme makers. So is the documentary warts and all? “Up to a point,” replies Waldman. “There are voices of criticism – diplomats who thought him a few steps behind events, the fact that he hasn’t gripped corruption as strongly as some hoped, and questions about some of what he’s doing. I’m aware there are further criticisms out there. “In peacetime, Zelensky’s five-year term as President would have expired three months ago. As it is he will remain in office until the war ends, when he says he will step down. But what then? He is only 46 now. “He can’t just go back and be a comedian on the telly,” says Waldman. “I’d love to do the follow-up documentary about what happens to him after the war. I can’t believe it won’t be fascinating.”