Turning the tide

Eighty years on, eyewitness testimony brings D-Day vividly to life

- HANNAH DAVIES

D-Day: The Unheard Tapes
Sun-Tue, 9pm, BBC2 (box set, iPlayer)

This week marks 80 years since the historic D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy in northern France that started to turn the tide of World War Two.

As part of a raft of programmes marking the anniversary (see panel, right), the remarkable story of the largest seaborne invasion in military history is recounted in the BBC2 docudrama series D-Day: The Unheard Tapes. Using archive audio recordings of British, American and German soldiers, the three-parter tells the story of how Operation Overlord unfolded.

Bringing this testimony vividly to life is a cast of actors in period dress, lip-syncing the veterans’ real voices, along with dramatic reconstructions and historical analysis.