Recorded at Chalke Valley History Festival, 30 June 2017.

Michael Buerk is one of our best-known foreign correspondents and broadcasters but in this special talk to tie in with his support for the RNLI he tells the extraordinary story of the part played by RNLI lifeboats during the epic evacuation in May 1940. 78 years ago the British Navy attempted an audacious wartime operation: the evacuation of 340,000 troops under fire from the beaches of northern France. The ‘miracle of Dunkirk’ as it became known, would change the course of the Second World War – and challenge the lifeboats of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to tackle a very different kind of rescue. Michael Buerk, long term RNLI supporter, tells how two volunteer lifeboat crews and 19 RNLI lifeboats joined an armada of little ships for one of the Second World War’s greatest rescues.