Helena Bonham Carter celebrates WW2’s unsung heroes in Radio 4 podcast

Helena Bonham Carter narrates the new BBC Radio 4 podcast History’s Secret Heroes, available on BBC Sounds.

She tells the extraordinary stories of some of the most fascinating unsung heroes from the Second World War. These are those who might not have always made the headlines or the history books, but what they did, changed the course of the war.

Stories include the likes of Major Charity Adams, the first African American woman to be an officer in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, and Bela Hazan, a young Jewish woman who went undercover at the Gestapo headquarters to fight against the Nazis.

Other episodes feature Virginia Hall, an American woman who helped organise the French resistance, and masterminded one of the war’s most successful prison breaks.

There’s also the remarkable story of American actor George Takei who, at just five years old, was removed from his home following the Pearl Harbour attack. He and his family were imprisoned without trial along with 120,000 other Japanese Americans.

Helena Bonham Carter says: “Both sets of my grandparents were unconventional war heroes, so I was thrilled to be involved with this fascinating new series and help tell these lesser known, but extraordinary, stories from World War II.

“The risks these people took and the number of lives they saved was nothing short of heroic and it’s a privilege to shine a light on their acts of courage.”

History’s Secret Heroes is available as a boxset on BBC Sounds first from today, 31 May and broadcast weekly on BBC Radio 4 at 11.30am also from today.