The New Volunteers

Available for over a year

Contemporary history series. Chris Ledgard tells the story of the Voluntary Service Overseas organisation and its controversial founder Alec Dickson. The scheme was born out of the ending of National Service in 1957, in order to give young men something else to do with the two years they had allocated to it. Chris speaks to some of the first volunteers, who made trips to West Africa and Borneo, and to colleagues and friends of Dickson.