TV & Radio
All the must-see/hear programmes
Late November Channel 4
It’s 80 years since the outbreak of the Second World War. It’s near enough in time for most of us to have at least an inkling of what our relatives went through, yet far enough for the details of their experiences to have become lost. My Grandparents’ War follows four actors – Mark Rylance, Kristin Scott Thomas, Helena Bonham Carter and Carey Mulligan – as they explore the stories of their forebears and fill in the gaps.
In the case of Bonham Carter, currently starring as Princess Margaret in Netflix blockbuster The Crown, her focus is on the lives of two people who had positions of authority and tried to do the right thing.
Bonham Carter’s grandmother was Violet Bonham Carter, the daughter of HH Asquith, prime minister between 1908 and 1916. In her own right, Violet was a Liberal politician, diarist and close friend of Winston Churchill. She was also one of the first to recognise the dangers of fascism and, in 1938, gave a speech savaging prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s efforts to secure “peace at any price that others can be forced to pay”. When the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, she helped those who had been displaced by war.
Bonham Carter also explores the life of her maternal grandfather, Eduardo Propper de Callejón. He was a Spanish diplomat who was living in France when the Nazis invaded, and he issued as many as 30,000 visas enabling Jewish refugees to transit through Spain and on to Portugal.
While we hadn’t seen the other shows in the series as WDYTYA? Magazine went to press, we’re promised footage from historic locations ranging from Dunkirk to prisoner of war camps in Asia.