BBC archive marks 70th anniversary of Dunkirk

Take a look behind the scenes at the BBC archive in Windmill Road before it moves to its new home in Perivale.

Sunday's edition of Broadcasting House brought together 200 listeners for a special edition broadcast from the BBC's Radio Theatre, which marked the culmination of their series 'Who do you think you archive?' in which listeners got the chance to discover their own radio gems from the BBC's archive.

The programme looked at some of the amazing stories which the public have called up from the archive, from the man who grew up not knowing that the drug thalidomide had been responsible for his condition, to the woman who wanted to hear Terry Wogan interview her silver medal-winning father. It also asked about wider archive issues with comments from digital media guru Emily Bell and Richard Ranf, Head of the British Library's Sound Archive and ending with the BBC director general Mark Thompson emphasising his commitment to ensuring the public gain access to more of the archives.

Our contribution to the event was the launch of our latest collection - WWII: Dunkirk Evacuation. It is the latest in the series of our wartime collections and one we found particularly enthralling to put together. Mostly because of the incredible personal stories that were captured in the archive and that we have been able to release. The documents in the collection reveal that the government prevented the BBC from broadcasting interviews with the rescued members of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and, when you listen to the stories that we were eventually able to record you get a sense of why. The chaos, horror and grinding misery of the beaches where men waited for rescue come across so clearly that it is understandable that the government wouldn't have wanted the Germans to know how close they had come to delivering a knock-out blow to Britain's chances of winning the war.

One surprising interview we unearthed for the collection was with Commander Charles Herbert Lightoller, who took his boat 'Sundowner' over to Dunkirk and managed to rescue 130 men, despite attacks by German bombers. We already knew of Lightoller from a previous collection. In 1936, he gave a talk to BBC listeners about his memories of the sinking of the Titanic - he was the highest ranking officer to have survived this disaster.

Most people will go through their lives (we hope) without ever experiencing a test of courage as great as just one of these incredible events and yet Lightoller lived through two, and was able to share his unique perspective on both with the BBC. This is just one of the many ways that personal stories run through the archives, and it explains why people hold a special place in their hearts for the BBC's heritage.

Since September 2009, almost every month has brought another 70th anniversary of some aspect of World War II. We've already looked at the outbreak of war and the German propaganda broadcaster Lord Haw-Haw, and though we won't be turning the BBC Archive into the War Archive, we'll continue to look at key moments in the war as we continue to explore the archive. We're already working on another major war-related collection in time for the summer and we hope to keep on giving you access to more of the incredible stories which we have preserved from these momentous years.

Kate Wheeler is Editorial Lead, BBC archive project