Peace and War

The gathering storm-clouds of war in the 1930s – German rearmament, the Spanish Civil War and the Munich crisis – and the story of the conflict through the so-called Phoney War, the Battle of Britain and the entry of Japan and the USA into the conflict with the attack on Pearl Harbor.

It was the moment when the BBC radio came into its own and, through rapidly honed reporting skills, became unequalled in its ability to bring back to listeners at home and around the world the gritty reality of combat – in both victory …and defeat.

(Photo: circa 1939: Refugees crossing the border at Le Perthus in the Pyrenees into France during the Spanish Civil War. Credit: Three Lions/Getty Images)