We are delighted to have Daniel Todman speaking at the festival for the first time this year - here he is explaining what he will be talking about.. His talk is on Thursday 24th June and you can buy tickets.

Audio from Chalke Valley History Festival 2017. German-born Dutch-Jewish teenager, Anne Frank who went into hiding during the Holocaust, is probably the best known diarist of the modern world. In this audio from CVHF 2017, Peter Caddick-Adams talks about her life and legacy.

Audio from Chalke Valley History Festival 2018. Salisbury and the surrounding area has a proud wartime heritage for thousands of Spitfires were built here in sheds, garages, bus depots and even a hotel. Norman Parker,

Audio from Chalke Valley History Festival 2019. Paul Beaver discusses with John Buckley and Paul Stoddart, the importance of that unsung hero of WWII, the rocket firing Hawker Typhoon.

A recording from Chalke Valley History Festival 2018, from a morning of exclusive talks and demonstrations looking at the story of the British Airborne Forces in #WW2. Here is former Commander of 3 Para in Afghanistan, Stuart Total in conversation with Fred Glover who was in 9th Para on 6th June 1944, tasked with jumping ahead of the main seaborne allied landing, Operation Neptune, to secure the left flank of the invasion and facilitate the seaborne landing.

Recording from Chalke Valley History Festival 2017. Katrin Himmler is a German author and political scientist. Her great-uncle was Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, and one of the principle architects of the Holocaust. Katrin has confronted her family legacy with a book, Die Brüder Himmler, translated into English as ‘The Himmler Brothers. A German Family History’. She has also edited, together with the historian Michael Wildt, private letters from Himmler that had been only recently discovered in Israel. The Private Heinrich Himmler: Letters of a Mass Murderer was published in the UK last year. Here, in conversation with James Holland, she discusses Himmler, his brothers, and reveals the burden of this Nazi family legacy.

Recording from Chalke Valley History Festival 2017. James Holland looks at one of the most iconic moments in Britain’s history. He examines the background to the German attack on the West in May 1940, challenging many of our deeply held perceptions, and explaining why the British evacuation of Dunkirk was, and remains, such a significant event.

Julie Summers is a bestselling author and historian. Her books include: Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine; The Colonel of Tamarkan, a biography of her grandfather, the man who built the ‘real’ bridge on the River Kwai; Stranger in the House, a social history of servicemen reuniting with their families after the Second World War, and When the Children Came Home, which tells the story of returning evacuees. Her book Jambusters was the inspiration for ITV’s hit drama series Home Fires, which ran for two seasons in 2015–16.

Britain got its first glimpse of the Special Air Service in the spring of 1944. Nearly three years earlier the special forces unit had been raised in Egypt, the brainchild of Lt David Stirling, and in the interim the SAS had grown from a force comprising six officers and sixty other ranks to a brigade encompassing two British regiments, 1SAS and 2SAS, two French regiments, 3SAS and 4SAS, and a company of Belgians.

Audio from Chalke Valley History Festival 2018. This epic battle was voted Britain’s Greatest Battle in a poll by the National Army Museum, yet few know or understand why this brutal but decisive engagement was so significant. As James Holland reveals in this talk, it deserves greater recognition not just for the extraordinary leadership of General Bill Slim but also for epic heroism and the dogged determination of all those who fought there.

Recorded at Chalke Valley History Festival 2018 Robin Rowland was an officer in Slim’s Fourteenth Army, fighting at the Battle of the Admin Box – the first significant victory against the Japanese – and then at the hell of Kohima and on through the final battles at Meiktila in Burma in 1945. His is an absolutely extraordinary story in which he saw truly terrible things but also witnessed immense courage, tragedy and camaraderie. Here he is in conversation with James Holland.

The battle of Arnhem, the great airborne fight for the bridges in 1944, was a courageous strategic gamble that failed. In this talk at CVHF 2018, Britain’s best-selling historian Antony Beevor, using often overlooked sources from Allied and German archives, reconstructs the terrible reality of the fighting and questions whether this plan to end the war could ever have worked, or whether it was always doomed to become the last German victory

Audio from Chalke Valley History Festival 2018. Michael Dobbs, Conservative Peer and author, explores Churchill’s passion, fragility and power, and he is no ordinary investigator of power. He was with Margaret Thatcher when she took her first steps into Downing Street, and with John Major when he was kicked out. But he remains most famous for creating the ultimate in Machiavellian politicians, Francis Urquhart, star of the global phenomenon that is House of Cards.

Audio from Geoff Wellum's talk with James Holland at Chalk Valley History Festival on Saturday, 28th June 2014. Geoff Wellum was a spitfire pilot throughout the Battle of Britain, flying and fighting in some of the fiercest aerial battles of that summer of 1940. More recently, he became the celebrated author of First Light, an astonishing memoir of those days. This was a rare public appearance and a very special event.

One of the great joys of researching my two books about special agents and pilots in the Second World War has been interviewing veterans and witnesses to that conflict, and others who knew or met those who served in it. As the human coast erodes, as it were, it feels ever more important to capture these stories.

Gordon Corera is a journalist and the author of several books on intelligence and security issues. Since 2004 he has been a Security Correspondent for BBC News, where he covers terrorism, cyber security, the work of intelligence agencies and other national security issues.

Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg were the only two women to serve as test pilots for the Nazi regime. Truly remarkable women, both were made Honorary Flight Captains and both were awarded the Iron Cross… yet they ended their lives on opposite sides of history.

Al Murray may be best known for his comic creation, the Pub Landlord, but he is also a serious and passionate historian and student of  World War Two. In this event, filmed at Chalke Valley History Festival 2017,  he brings that immense knowledge to bear in defence of Field Marshal Montgomery of Alamein, talks about the life, career, great victories and controversies of Britain’s most famous wartime general.

Highlights from Al Murray's excellent talk on Field Marshal Montegomery of Alamein on Monday 26 June. In this event he brought his immense knowledge to bear in defence of Field Marshal Montgomery of Alamein, discussing the life, career, great victories and controversies of Britain’s most famous wartime general.

Audio from Chalke Valley History Festival for Schools 2017 with Chris Culpin.

Günter Halm, a veteran of the Second World War, fought under Rommel in the Deutsches Afrikakorps, won the Knight’s Cross for his part in the First Battle of Alamein in July 1942 and later served in Normandy. In his talk at Chalke Valley History Festival on Saturday, 2nd July, he discussed his wartime memories in what was a truly fascinating morning.

This extraordinary clip is from the German newsreel 'Die Deutsche Wochenschau' produced by Josef Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry from 1940 until the end of the war.  This particular episode clip shows Günter Halm receiving his Knight's Cross from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel for destroying nine British tanks at the First Battle of Alamein in 1942

We had the privilege of having a complete 7-man crew who made up the different roles on a Lancaster bomber during the Second World War at CVHF this year. George 'Johnnie' Johnson, Jo Lancaster, Frank Tilley, Hal Gardner, John de Hoop, Dave Fellowes, Steve Bethell were in discussion with Paul Beaver.

In the 70th Anniversary year of the D-Day landings in Normandy, we were very fortunate to have two veterans of that campaign talking about their experiences. Fred Glover was in 9 Para, and David Render served with the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry. Chairing the discussion was Stuart Tootal, former Commander of 3 Para in Afghanistan. This was a rare treat.

This year at CVHF, some hugely significant anniversaries are being marked by the 1940s themed weekend; namely, 75 years since the Battle of Britain and 70 years since the end of World War Two.

Flying obsolescent aircraft, often without clear objectives, target restrictions and little good intelligence, the aircrew of Bomber Command raided Germany and the Low Countries to both support the tactical objectives and begin the fight back.

This is the story of the remarkable canoe raid on German ships in Bordeaux harbour told by a man who himself served in the Special Boat Squadron. The plan was a suicidally daring one: to drop twelve Commandos at the mouth of the Gironde River and for them to paddle ‘cockleshell’ canoes right into Bordeaux harbour. There they were to sink the enemy ships at anchor. To do this they would have to survive terrifying tidal races, the heavily defended port, and then escape across the Pyrenees. In this compelling talk, Paddy Ashdown reveals some devastating new research that serves only to make the achievements of the ‘Cockleshell Heroes’ all the more remarkable.

Recording from Antony Beevor’s CVHF talk on Thursday, 27th June 2013. Antony Beevor’s monumental book, Stalingrad, has been one of the most read and highly praised accounts of the Second World War to have been written in the past twenty-five years. It was also the book that ignited our fascination with the war anew, published, as it was, nearly a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union and drawing on previously unseen Russian archives

I would never have guessed that an image in my head of a small, terrified evacuee standing in a graveyard over thirty years ago would lead me to write a short story, which grew into a novel

Even in 1940, the Spitfire had celebratory status. Communities and individuals around the British Isles and across the Dominions and Empire were thinking of new ways to collect money and entice their friends to part with their hard-earned savings to buy a Spitfire.

This is a transcript of an interview with Historian and broadcaster, James Holland, 22 February 2001..

Captain Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown is an extraordinary man, whose career stretched from the pre-war days of the biplane to supersonic jets. Captain Brown visited Nazi Germany before the war, flying with General Ernst Udet, flew with the Fleet Air Arm early in the war, had an escort carrier sunk underneath him, then became a pioneering test pilot. He was the first person to land a two-engine Mosquito on an aircraft carrier, flew every single one of the German experimental jets at the end of the war, interrogated Göring, and was a key figure in the post-war Jet Age. No man has ever flown more aircraft types. Charming, amusing, and with a mind as sharp as ever it was, this is a rare opportunity to hear one of Britain’s true flying legends talk about his life and times.

Max Hastings is one of the foremost chroniclers of the Second World War. Here he talks about Winston Churchill, our greatest war leader. Always forthright, Sir Max looks at the triumphs and the tragedies, the successes and the failures, whether it be the extraordinary rallying cry of 1940 or the impulsiveness that often drove a wedge between him and his generals and even Britain’s allies. He also touches on some of the lesser-known features of Churchill’s war leadership. This is an affectionate and vivid portrait, but also an unsparing one, in which he is willing to challenge some of the myths that surround our view of Britain’s wartime performance.

When I first heard the eulogy in 2006 for my great-uncle Hanns Alexander, I was amazed. Apparently, he had been served as a Nazi hunter in the British Army at the end of the Second World War. How was this possible? After all, he had grown up as a Jew in Berlin.

Audio from Chalke Valley History Festival, Monday 24th June 2013. They came from all over France and Europe to escape Hitler’s reach. The mountain paths were steep and treacherous...even more so in winter or in the dead of night. Some came through established escape channels, others just took to the road, hiding in barns and attics along the way. Many did not make it. Today, their courage and endurance are celebrated each July by a trek along Le Chemin de Liberté, and the intrepid Edward Stourton hauled on his knapsack to join them. Along the way, he encountered stories of midnight scrambles across rooftops, doomed love affairs and astonishing heroism. In this vivid telling of this little- known aspect of the Second World War, Edward Stourton gave an enthralling talk of adventure, courage and also tragedy.

Recording from Claire Mulley's talk "The spy who loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville, Britain's First Female Special Agent of the Second World War', for CVHF 2013, Saturday 29th June 2013.

In March 1944, some 80 Allied prisoners of war tunnelled out of a maximum security POW camp in Lower Silesia. Immortalised fifty years ago in the film The Great Escape, the breakout from Stalag Luft III has become a vital – and almost mythological – component of our Second World War story. In his talk, Guy will take a fresh look at the escape, and ask a number of penetrating questions. What was the point of the Great Escape? Did it really open, as is often claimed, a new front within the German Reich? How many POWs actually wanted to escape? How well was it organised? Did RAF officers really have a duty to escape? How much help did the Germans supply? What was the character and motivation of Roger Bushell, the squadron leader who led the escape? And finally, was the Great Escape really all that great? Guy’s talk promises to be both thrilling and controversial as he strips away the myth to uncover the reality.

Following his talk on the 'Cockleshell Heroes', Xander Drury caught up with Paddy Ashdown as he discusses his latest book and shares his thoughts on the 2015 General Election and the changes to the history curriculum.

Bob Stanford Tuck was every inch the fighter pilot as if ordered up from Central Casting; brave, good-looking, a crack shot and a superb aviator. The London boy who did not excel at school and nearly made the Merchant Navy his career, was to become the first Spitfire Ace in May 1940 in the skies above northern France.