Reel History of Britain — Season 1, Episode 6: Britain's Home Guard
Documentary • 30 min • 1 season, 20 episodes • ★ 6.0/10
Episode synopsis
Today we're pulling up at Osterley Park in Middlesex, the site of the first Home Guard training school, to look back to the Second World War and a time when millions of ordinary men were prepared to die for our country as Home Guard recruits. Robert Brown will come face to face with his father as a Home Guard Company Commander. Dad's Army creator, Jimmy Perry will tell us why he signed up to the Home Guard. And Ken Chambers will share with us his own extraordinary stories from his time in the Home Guard, some of which could have been taken straight from Dad's Army.
About Reel History of Britain
Reel History of Britain is a 20 part series being shown on BBC Two, presented by Melvyn Bragg and about the history of modern Britain; through the eyes of people who were there. It was shown from 5–30 September 2011. The programme is a social history documentary, charting the course of the twentieth century through archive film, plus interviews and recollections of key events that have taken place in the last one-hundred years, since the advent of moving film. In each episode, Bragg goes to a different place in the UK and shows people film in a 1950s Ministry of Technology mobile cinema, then gauges their reactions and captures them on film.