Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2026-01-30T15:15:33.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: 'You learn from your losses'
items: 'We were bonded by our ambition'
items: Scottish curler Bruce Mouat reveals experience of coming out and why one needs a burner phone during the Winter Olympics
items: Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson on the European Championships hopes and British pride ahead of Winter Olympics 2026
items: 'I'd never been further than Blackpool'
items: Getting into line
items: 'I saw other girls making daisy chains in the playground'
items: 'I wished I was a man, with what they earned'
items: 'We were the stepping stone'
items: 'I was incensed the FA wouldn't let me play'
items: Wales midfielder Josie Green says "nasty" comments 'dragging women’s football through the mud' are "constant"
items: The first woman to reach 100 England caps says her "lost generation" put women's football on the map
items: England's former women's captain doubts full equality will come to football in her lifetime
items: Wendy Owen, pioneer of women's football, recalls early sexism – and being told it was a joke
items: 'I'll be thinking of those who didn't come back'
items: 'There was a group of airmen who we talked to, and I got a kiss from each of them'
items: 'I always felt guilty that they kept me behind'
items: 'They had to move the rubble to come and get me'
items: VE Day at 80: Stories of courage, sacrifice and survival
items: "The hell I saw will never leave me" – The cameraman who exposed Bergen-Belsen's true horrors
items: 'I thought he was resting in peace and now it feels he isn’t'
items: Martin Lewis reveals how to beat your family at Monopoly this Christmas
items: 'I stood on a mine and heard a click'
items: "People are predicting chaos"
items: "Trump will not concede"
items: BBC's Sarah Smith: 'Trump will not concede' and other predictions for 2024
items: In search of Nicola
items: A woman's work
items: Servant of the People

'You learn from your losses'
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: 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…
encoded: 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, b…

06I7A1269-copy-0c1dfe1-e1769614997720.jpg
width: 1757
height: 1306

'We were bonded by our ambition'
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson are the greatest British ice dancers since Torvill and Dean. Can they emulate them and win Olympic gold?
encoded: 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 wo…

FigureSkating-SM-015224-6b64b86-e1769615139344.jpg
width: 5112
height: 3408

Scottish curler Bruce Mouat reveals experience of coming out and why one needs a burner phone during the Winter Olympics
type: item
date: 2026-01-26T17:01:05.000Z
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: 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…
encoded: 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 t…

I7A1269-a10c9ad-rotated.jpg
width: 8192
height: 5464

Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson on the European Championships hopes and British pride ahead of Winter Olympics 2026
type: item
date: 2026-01-06T07:00:07.000Z
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: Exclusive
description: Radio Times caught up with figure skaters Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson ahead of the European Championships on home... ice.
encoded: 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 en…

Lewis-Gibson-Lilah-Fear-67545ab.jpg
width: 1920
height: 1280

'I'd never been further than Blackpool'
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Ken Knowles was Warrant Officer First Class (Conductor) of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps
encoded: 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 breakfas…

33Picture-1-copy-71ff6fd-e1754470988278.jpg
width: 1053
height: 702

Getting into line
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Tournament Director Jamie Baker on Wimbledon's removal of line judges
encoded: 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…

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/06/28GettyImages-1525002674-fcc3d62-e1751040529934.jpg
width: 2484
height: 1656

'I saw other girls making daisy chains in the playground'
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: 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
encoded: 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 thou…

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/06/shutterstockeditorial15236142bv-copy-383fdc5-e1750693895853.jpg
width: 712
height: 475

'I wished I was a man, with what they earned'
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: 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
encoded: 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 did…

27DSCF8660-copy-c32afae-e1750693391308.jpg
width: 1536
height: 1024

'We were the stepping stone'
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: 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
encoded: 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 m…

27DSCF6714-a09ff83.jpg
width: 7728
height: 5152

'I was incensed the FA wouldn't let me play'
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: 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
encoded: 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…

27DSCF8765-copy-d4b6dd4-e1750692506428.jpg
width: 1536
height: 1024

Wales midfielder Josie Green says "nasty" comments 'dragging women’s football through the mud' are "constant"
type: item
date: 2025-06-23T23:01:54.000Z
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: Football
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: "Making history for our country like this was a massive goal."
encoded: 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 ha…

GettyImages-2194852237-a6b9252.jpg
width: 5615
height: 3743

The first woman to reach 100 England caps says her "lost generation" put women's football on the map
type: item
date: 2025-06-23T23:01:39.000Z
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: Football
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: "I wished I was a man, with what they earned. Football cost me a fortune."
encoded: 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 sho…

27DSCF8660-d03737e.jpg
width: 7728
height: 5796

England's former women's captain doubts full equality will come to football in her lifetime
type: item
date: 2025-06-23T23:01:33.000Z
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: Football
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: Women's Euro 2025
description: "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."
encoded: 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 wom…

Wendy Owen, pioneer of women's football, recalls early sexism – and being told it was a joke
type: item
date: 2025-06-23T23:01:27.000Z
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: Football
subject: Sport
subject: TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: Women's Euro 2025
description: Owen was a pioneer of women's football, but she had to overcome many obstacles in order to play, simply because of her sex.
encoded: 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 cattl…

XT5S5165-a236c3c.jpg
width: 3840
height: 2560

'I'll be thinking of those who didn't come back'
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: 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
encoded: 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

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/04/19CF052419RTVEstewarttaylor-copy-57ca857-e1745664335593.jpg
width: 1536
height: 1024

'There was a group of airmen who we talked to, and I got a kiss from each of them'
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: 102–year–old former ATS member Marjorie Hanson was among those partying in Trafalgar Square on VE Day 1945
encoded: 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 h…

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/04/19CF052311RTVE-MarjorieHanson-copy-36a76b5-e1745664438700.jpg
width: 1340
height: 893

'I always felt guilty that they kept me behind'
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: 101–year–old Jack Gledhill didn’t see active service, but is proud to have played a part in D-Day
encoded: 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.”

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/04/19CF052188RTVE-copy-9182c3c-e1745664486822.jpg
width: 1377
height: 916

'They had to move the rubble to come and get me'
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: 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
encoded: 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 fr…

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2025/04/19CF052345RTVE-copy-fc3ec6f-e1745664397306.jpg
width: 1536
height: 1024

'I'll be thinking of those who didn't come back'
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: 102–year–old RAF veteran Stewart Taylor piloted a Dakota transport plane, serving in Europe and the Far East
encoded: 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 befor…

VE Day at 80: Stories of courage, sacrifice and survival
type: item
date: 2025-04-28T23:01:54.000Z
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: Current Affairs
subject: TV
subject: Magazine
description: "So many of the ones I knew who didn't come back were air crew. They're who I'll be thinking of."
encoded: 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…

"The hell I saw will never leave me" – The cameraman who exposed Bergen-Belsen's true horrors
type: item
date: 2025-04-07T11:01:48.000Z
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: Documentaries
subject: TV
subject: BBC iPlayer
subject: BBC Two
subject: Magazine
description: How a cameraman accompanying troops liberating Bergen-Belsen revealed its full horrors to the world.
encoded: 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 …

bergen-belsen-a2014dd.jpg
width: 3000
height: 2000

'I thought he was resting in peace and now it feels he isn’t'
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Professor Sue Black wants justice for the British PoWs whose organs were removed by the Nazis
encoded: 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 …

4Unknown-c926f59-e1736785743964.jpg
width: 1831
height: 1218

Martin Lewis reveals how to beat your family at Monopoly this Christmas
type: item
date: 2024-12-10T00:01:20.000Z
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: Entertainment
subject: TV
subject: Christmas
subject: ITV
subject: ITVX
subject: Magazine
description: Notepads at the ready!
encoded: 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…

martin-lewis-9db427a.jpg
width: 3000
height: 2000

'I stood on a mine and heard a click'
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: 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
encoded: 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 universi…

46013A1944-3500f04-e1730899520633.jpg
width: 3840
height: 2563

"People are predicting chaos"
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Channel 4 News' Washington Correspondent, Siobhan Kennedy, has ruffled feathers…
encoded: 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

Screenshot-2024-10-22-at-15.43.08-6aa750a-e1730382825977.jpg
width: 5082
height: 2719

"Trump will not concede"
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Sarah Smith, the BBC’s North America editor is ready for an “off the charts” election
encoded: 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, …

https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/3/2024/10/45GettyImages2167179772-6b70367-e1730305674894.jpg
width: 1981
height: 1320

BBC's Sarah Smith: 'Trump will not concede' and other predictions for 2024
type: item
date: 2024-10-29T12:45:32.000Z
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: Current Affairs
subject: TV
subject: BBC
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: "It's going to be so tight that I suspect we will not get a definitive result on the night."
encoded: 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 rec…

GettyImages-2170263973-3c76e70-e1730737406943.jpg
width: 1003
height: 669

In search of Nicola
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Following Nicola Bulley’s disappearance, social media “sleuths” added to her family’s agony. Now they want to tell her story…
encoded: 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 wh…

490634-e92b727-e1726762570743.jpg
width: 960
height: 640

A woman's work
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Kim Cattrall is giving her voice to pioneering intelligence officer Eloise Page, the USA’s first female spy in a male-dominated world
encoded: 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 …

GettyImages-2156377370-52f1d3f.jpg
width: 3333
height: 2222

Servant of the People
type: item
creator: Kate Battersby
subject: App
subject: App features
description: From playing the part to living it: a new documentary shows how Volodymyr Zelensky went from comedy star to wartime leader
encoded: 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 hap…

GettyImages-1613347596-b72e793-e1725017695908.jpg
width: 1860
height: 1238