Pip: Alan Malcher has been quietly assembling a wartime archive on his site, and it turns out 1940 had a great deal to say for itself.
Mara: This episode moves through Blitz film and newsreel footage, a profile of the historian behind the site, and a remarkable 1947 SOE reconstruction. Let's start with the footage from the Blitz itself.
Blitz Films And Newsreels
Pip: Newsreels and public information films from 1940 — these weren't just documentation, they were the news, the warning, and the propaganda all at once.
Mara: The post titled "News Reel: Largest Blitz on London during WW2" carries a simple note: "1940 News Reel below." The footage does the talking.
Pip: Which is exactly the point — no editorial needed when the images are that direct.
Mara: Alongside that, "News Reel: German Blitz on London 1940" covers the same period from a slightly different angle, and the public information film "Build your house like an air raid shelter" shifts from reporting to instruction — telling civilians how to survive what the newsreels were showing.
Pip: Right — from witness to manual in one step. That brings us neatly to the person curating all of this.
Military Historian Profiles
Mara: The site includes two profile posts setting out the credentials behind the curation — "Alan Malcher Military Historian, Author and Broadcaster" and the fuller version, "Alan Malcher — Military Historian, Broadcaster, Author and Veteran."
Pip: Veteran is doing a lot of work in that title, and it should — it's the thing that separates a researcher from someone who lived adjacent to this material.
Mara: Both posts establish the same foundation: military history, broadcasting, and authorship, with the veteran dimension grounding the editorial choices. It explains why the Blitz footage isn't framed sensationally — the selection itself reflects a particular seriousness.
Pip: The archive makes more sense once you know who's building it. And the deepest item in it is next.
SOE Wartime Reconstruction
Pip: The SOE operated in occupied France in near-total secrecy — so what does it mean when, two years after the war, the people who actually ran those operations agree to reconstruct them on film?
Mara: The post "Now the Truth Can be Told: School for Danger" describes exactly that. It's a "1947 reconstruction of the work of the Special Operations Executive in France during the Second World War," and crucially, "the cast are former members of F Section SOE and the two main characters are Harry Ree and Jacqueline Nearne."
Pip: So the actors are the agents. The people playing themselves are the people who were actually there, in France, under cover, during the occupation.
Mara: That collapses the distance between document and drama entirely. Harry Ree and Jacqueline Nearne weren't performing history — they were revisiting decisions that had life-or-death consequences. The 1947 date matters too: close enough to the events that memory is sharp, far enough that the Official Secrets Act had loosened its grip.
Pip: "Now the Truth Can be Told" — the title is doing real work there.
Mara: From Blitz newsreels to SOE agents reconstructing their own missions — it's all primary material, handled carefully.
Pip: The archive keeps growing. More to come.
Alan Malcher 