Antiques Roadshow: D-Day

Editorial

BBC One Yorkshire HD

Antiques Roadshow

Factual: Antiques

Fiona Bruce and the team uncover the fascinating stories behind valuable personal items.

Amazing items, poignant stories, beautiful locations. Fiona Bruce and the experts uncover fascinating family and social history embodied in priceless, personal and peculiar items.

D-Day

BBC One London

London

The BBC South West region started on 20th April 1961 as part of the BBC Television Service, before becoming BBC One South West.

BBC One South West HD

BBC One Scotland

Scotland

BBC Northern Ireland region started on 19th April 1955 as part of the BBC Television Service, before becoming BBC One Northern Ireland.

BBC One Northern Ireland

The BBC North East & Cumbria region started in 1959 (tbc) as part of the BBC Television Service, before becoming BBC One North East & Cumbria.

BBC One North East & Cumbria

BBC One Cambridgeshire

BBC One Channel Islands

BBC One region covering Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire.

BBC One East Midlands HD

The BBC South region started on 5th January 1961 as part of the BBC Television Service, before becoming BBC One South.

BBC One South HD

BBC One South West

Formerly part of a wider BBC One South East region that included London and part of the South region. Separated from BBC One London 2001-09-03 following reorganisation of the South East region.

BBC One South East

BBC One West Midlands

Simulcast of BBC One Northern Ireland in high definition. From 24/10/2012

BBC One Northern Ireland HD

BBC One South

BBC One Wales

Wales

BBC One Yorks & Lincs

BBC One Oxfordshire HD

BBC One South East HD

The BBC West region started on 1st September 1957 as part of the BBC Television Service, before becoming BBC One West.

BBC One West

BBC One Channel Islands HD

Simulcast of network BBC One in high definition. From 03/11/2010

BBC One HD

Simulcast of BBC One Wales in high definition. From 29/01/2013

BBC One Wales HD

BBC One West HD

The BBC East region started on 1st May 1959 as part of the BBC Television Service, before becoming BBC One East.

BBC One East

Formerly part of a wider BBC One South East region. Separated as BBC One London 2001-09-03 following reorganisation of the South East region.

BBC One London HD

Simulcast of BBC One Scotland in high definition. From 14/01/2013

BBC One Scotland HD

BBC One Cambridgeshire HD

BBC One North East & Cumbria HD

BBC One East Midlands

BBC One Oxfordshire

BBC One North West

BBC One West Midlands HD

BBC One Yorkshire

BBC One North West HD

BBC One Yorks & Lincs HD

BBC One East HD

Fiona Bruce

Robert Murphy

Matt Thomas

Antiques Roadshow: Series 46: D-Day

Series 46

BBC One - Antiques Roadshow, Series 46, D-Day

A special edition of the roadshow to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

A special episode commemorating the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in June 1944, filmed in Normandy and Portsmouth, and featuring testimony from those who were there.

Fiona Bruce is in Normandy in France for a special edition of the roadshow to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in June 1944. Filmed in Normandy and at the D-Day Museum in Portsmouth, the episode features remarkable first-hand testimony from those who were there, including veteran Ken Cooke.

Across five beaches, codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword, ‘Operation Overlord’ was the largest seaborne invasion in history – an event that would turn the tide of World War II and lead ultimately to the defeat of Germany and victory for the Allies just under a year later, in May 1945.

With Fiona in France and our roadshow experts at various locations in the UK, we unfold the story of D-Day through items brought in by our visitors and rare artefacts held in various museums.  

This episode includes eyewitness accounts from those who played a part in D-Day itself. Marie Scott, a radio operator based in secret tunnels beneath Portsmouth, describes listening in to the invasion as it happened. Colette Marin-Catherine, who helped the French Resistance in her village outside Caen, recalls the last German soldier she saw. Ninety-eight-year-old Ken Cooke, a private in the 7th Battalion Green Howards, movingly recounts landing on Gold Beach on the morning of D-Day itself. 

In Normandy, Fiona tells the remarkable story of Company Sergeant Major Stanley Hollis, seeking out the very German pillbox which he stormed single-handedly. For his actions, which included rescuing his men under fire, Hollis was the only soldier to be awarded the Victoria Cross on D-Day. The VC is now on display at the Green Howards Museum in Richmond, Yorkshire, where militaria expert Bill Harriman meets up with Hollis’s granddaughter Amanda Hart to hear about the man behind the medal. 

At the D-Day Story Museum in Portsmouth, Siobhan Tyrell is charmed by a coat festooned with badges from 89 different regiments, which were collected by a five-year-old girl on the eve of D-Day. Paul Atterbury discovers an original dummy ‘Rupert’ paratrooper – one of 500 decoys dropped over Normandy to deceive the Germans. Mark Smith steps on to a fully restored landing craft tank or LCT –  the only example surviving from a fleet of 800. Frances Christie takes a look at the monumental Overlord Embroidery – a series of 34 hand-stitched panels which take their cue from the Bayeux Tapestry –  in the company of its original designer Sandra Lawrence. General Montgomery’s grandson Henry shows us one of Monty’s famous berets. Piper Bill Millin’s grandson John talks about his father’s heroic landing on Sword Beach, armed only with a set of bagpipes and captured in an iconic photograph. And one of our visitors brings along a wooden pull-along toy made from the debris of landing craft by her grandfather for his one-year-old daughter back home.

In Wales, we hear from the family of a Black American serviceman who bravely set up barrage balloons over Omaha Beach, and at the Met Office in Devon, our expert Cristian Beadman takes a rare peek at the original weather charts drawn up by Eisenhower’s chief meteorologist James Stagg, whose forecast altered the beach landings by 24 hours and with it averted certain disaster.

Antiques Roadshow: Series 46

BBC One

Experts invite members of the public to bring along their antiques for examination.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Antiques Roadshow

Series 46

D-Day

Contributors

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC One Yorkshire HD

About BBC One