WHAT’S NEW ABOUT THIS SERIES?

The key difference is that we have taken the leap into using a Bradshaw’s Guide from 1936 and that opens up a very interesting period in continental history. We have been filming these programmes for 12 years now and they are always developing. We go to different places and we go to different eras. When we started, we were in the middle of the 19th century with our guidebooks, so we had mainly engravings, and the occasional photograph. Now we are moving on to parts of European history for which there is very good newsreel material. This series also looks a bit different; there is more drone footage; we have become more adventurous in how we film.

SO WHERE DOES THIS SET OF JOURNEYS START?

We begin in Spain in 1936, with General Franco in the ascendancy. We go to Salamanca, where my socialistleaning father was teaching at the time. Luckily he was not there on the day of Franco’s uprising. I get presented with my father’s Anti-Fascist Intellectuals membership card and am given a glimpse of Franco’s archive of the some two million people classified as enemies. I am also given a tour of the trenches with George Orwell’s son: it is fascinating and, for me, emotional.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE OTHER HIGHLIGHTS?

In France I go to Orleans to gain insights into the enduring legacy of Joan of Arc; in Sicily I learn whether the trains really did run on time under Mussolini. In Germany I visit the stadium built for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the Zeppelin field in Nuremberg where the rallies were held. Filming proved to be difficult as they were dismantling the stage set up for a rock concert that took place the night before. It’s interesting that, rather than demolishing it, they wanted to normalise the place and use it for public events so there was never any sense that it was a shrine for Nazi sympathisers.