Their Finest Hour, a six-part series that features true stories from the unsung heroes of World War II.
Featuring moving personal testimonies and revelations from Britain’s army of home-based heroes, along with little known archive footage, each episode will hone in on a different industry, from the merchant navy to the emergency services, the aircraft industry, the countryside, the railways and the coal mines. Still fiercely proud of their contribution to the war this is the first time many of the contributors, now in their 80s and 90s, have told their stories.
This was a time when everyone ‘mucked in’ and did their bit for the war effort: young women with no knowledge of aircrafts found themselves transformed into pilots flying planes to RAF bases across the country; underage men risked their lives as fire fighters in dangerous blitz damaged buildings battling to save national landmarks such as St Paul’s Cathedral; and schoolboys, often desperate to serve were, thanks to a lottery style selection process, sent to work down the coal mines as Bevin Boys.
While key battles were being waged all over the world, ordinary people were defying Hitler’s bombs here in the UK. These ‘so called’ ordinary people kept Britain’s chief industries in production - made aircrafts, built ships and dug the coal that powered them.
With first-hand testimonies and revelations from some of the surviving members of Britain’s army of home-based heroes – those who kept the railways working, cared for the injured and produced the basic provisions that helped Britain to ultimately win the war – Their Finest Hour is packed with previously untold stories of heroism and tragedy and gives a complete and moving picture of life on the Home Front.