Episode 2 Wales on the One Show

Hello, I'm Alex Jones,

but this is not the usual version of The One Show,

this is a really special edition, all about my home country of Wales.

This is the studio, and it's usually frantic in here.

There'll be showbiz celebrities over there,

some reporters arguing about who's sitting where on the sofa,

occasionally, the odd animal, but today, it's just you and me

and this really lovely pile of Welsh films, handcrafted by BBC Wales,

that have been shown on The One Show over the last couple of years.

It's always nice when we've got a Welsh film on the show but today we got them stacked wall-to-wall.

So sit back and relax and enjoy Wales On The One Show.

Coming up on the programme - deadly deception.

Dan Snow is in the Rhondda Valley on the trail of a man who never was.

They created this completely false personality, this person who'd never existed.

-Who is the picture of?

-The picture is of a MI5 officer

who just happened to look a bit like the dead man.

It's as Welsh as Tom Jones, so what will an English man make of laverbread?

Jay Rayner gets his first taste of Gower seaweed.

I must admit, I'm a little nervous because I have no idea

whether I'm going to like it or not.

Where does a perfect landscape artist look for inspiration?

Gyles Brandreth follows Turner to Tintern.

He became known as the painter of light

and what he achieved began here, in the ruins of Tintern Abbey.

And Medieval mayhem at Caerphilly Castle,

Joe Crowley is catapulted back in time for a lesson in siege warfare.

Prepare to loose.

-Huzzah!

-ALL: Huzzah!

Let's start with a really moving film.

During World War II, thousands of children were separated from their families

and evacuated to the safety of Wales.

For many, it was an unsettling experience,

but for Dorothy Young, it was life-changing.

Angellica Bell went to Camrose near Haverfordwest to hear her story.

1939, war was about to be declared.

Britain braced itself for air raids from the mighty Luftwaffe.

Anticipating four million civilian casualties,

the Government decided to evacuate children aged 4 to 14

from cities most at risk.

Codenamed Operation Pied Piper, the mass evacuation was traumatic.

Parents sobbed as 1.5 million boys and girls were labelled

and marched onto trains, with no idea when they'd be back.

Two-thirds of the children from evacuation areas such as London, Manchester and Liverpool

joined the voluntary exodus.

Carrying only a suitcase and gas mask,

they were transported far away to the countryside.

Many evacuees have painful memories of being separated from loved ones

and mistreated at their new homes.

But for others, it was a great adventure.

And some found a completely different life from the one they had left behind.

'Next train to arrive at platform one...'

Dorothy Young is retracing the steps she took 70 years ago as an evacuee -

a journey that changed her life forever.

Aged just four, she and her big sister were brought to Camrose in Wales.

They were billeted on a farm with Elwyn and Florence Thomas,

total strangers.

I still get butterflies when I come up here. It's like coming home.

Hi!

'The farm's still in the family

'and run by the Thomases' daughter-in-law and granddaughter.

'Dorothy is a regular visitor.'

-I'm back.

-Hiya, Dot, you all right?

It's beautiful here. I've got a question for you.

What's it like, really, having Dorothy come every year?

-ALL LAUGH

-She's just like one of the family to us, she really is.

You're always welcome back here. She knows that.

'The farmhouse has kept its traditional feel

'and Dorothy still sleeps in the same room she slept in as an evacuee.'

-Aw! This is the exact room you stayed in?

-Exact room.

-Can I sit on the bed?

-June used to sleep there

-and I used to sleep here.

-Did you miss your mum on that first night?

I did miss her but then when Mrs Thomas tucked us up,

-I thought, "Oh, she's like Mum."

-Aw!

Far from the terror of air raids, Dorothy spent five long years

with her foster parents and grew to love her life in rural Wales.

Mr Thomas, we'd sit on the garden step there

and he'd make a flute out of a cane.

He'd cut it so you could go... Mrs Thomas was baking.

I'd be mixing the butter.

-So you did things with them that a child would do with their parents?

-Yeah.

Was that hard for your mother? Did you have much contact with her?

Not really. Only when she came down for school holidays.

-Would you say the relationship with your real mum and dad, that deteriorated?

-Yes.

Well, you've lost that bond.

'By the end of the war,

'Dorothy had spent half her life on the farm but now faced the prospect

'of returning to her real family - a mother and father she barely knew.'

-So what was it like when you had to leave?

-Horrible.

We had to go down to the station. Mum came for us. All crying.

And Mrs Thomas said, "Could Dorothy stay down here?"

She said, "Could we adopt her?"

And Mum said "no".

-So what do you remember from day, being at the station?

-Crying.

Never stopped crying for ages, I don't think. Wanted to come back here.

Dorothy returned to urban life only to find her parents' relationship in ruins.

When her mother and father split up, she found herself

in a children's home but never forgot the Thomases back in Wales.

You always remember people that love you.

I wish they had been my parents because they were a lovely couple.

Very caring people. But it wasn't to be.

Operation Pied Piper was the biggest mass movement of people

in British history and it left deep psychological scars.

The war had broken family bonds which were hard to restore.

For many evacuees, things would never be the same.

What a story, and incredible footage.

There's something about the faces of all those lost-looking children

that really does tug at your heartstrings.

Of course, when they arrived in Wales, it was quite a culture shock for the evacuees.

But I imagine there was one thing that they might have found particularly intriguing.

It's green, it's slimy and it's about the only food which Jay Rayner has never tasted.

Richard Burton called it Welshman's caviar.

Food writers have described its flavour as being like olives

with marine undertones. Me?

I'd describe it as an adventure in food. Because I've never eaten it before.

It's laverbread, a very Welsh concoction

made by boiling down a particular kind of seaweed for many hours.

I must admit, I'm a little nervous because I have no idea whether I'm going to like it or not.

The tradition of eating seaweed is centuries old

and is as Welsh as Tom Jones and Rugby Union.

Probably first eaten as survival food by people

forced from their farmland and hunting grounds by Roman or Viking invaders,

it gradually became a staple of the national diet.

Eating seaweed may be in decline elsewhere in Britain,

but it's still going strong here on the Gower Peninsula.

Local lad Rick Bennett has been picking seaweed since he was a boy.

So, Rick, what exactly are we looking for?

We're looking for laver, purple laver. Its Latin name is Porphyra umbilicalis.

It's a seaweed, and we've got some right here in front of us.

-It's quite slimy.

-Bring some up.

-There we go. There's some laver.

It is very tough, isn't it?

It's quite tough but in that rubbery sort of way.

Almost like Clingfilm in the way it sticks to the rock.

-Why should we eat laverbread?

-There's lots of vitamins - all the B vitamins, B1, B2, B12,

-there's vitamin A, vitamin C...

-Is there anything not in it?

There's iron in it. There's pretty much everything you need, really.

I like it in a bacon sandwich or cooked into little bannock cakes -

oats, flour, a bit of milk,

a dollop of that in and baked in the oven.

Superfood it may be, but it's hardly pretty.

Then again, many of the foods I really love, like offal,

are rarely considered good-lookers.

But good food is not a beauty pageant.

The method of turning seaweed into laverbread has retained the same key elements for centuries.

It's repeatedly washed, then boiled for four to five hours,

then minced to produce a stiff green mush.

Now, that is not looking appetising.

The laverbread industry here is tiny,

producing just around 40 tonnes a year, and most of it never crosses the border out of Wales.

If I've not eaten it before, it must be in culinary obscurity.

Just a stone's throw from the Gower, Swansea's market stalls

have been selling laverbread for hundreds of years.

It must have something going for it.

We have our regulars who come every day, or every other day to get it,

once a week or whatever.

But people will try it, holidaymakers will try it.

They come here to see what it is

because they always expect a loaf of bread but obviously it's seaweed. They have a bit of a shock on that.

But what do the modern Welsh think of their forefathers' staple meal?

-It's not bad, actually.

-Not bad?

-No.

-What is it? Seaweed?

-It's seaweed, yeah.

-Oh, is that a no?

-Mmm-hmm!

-You don't like the taste of that?

-Nmm-mmm.

-Just knowing what it is doesn't do it for me. I can't help it.

-Is that the problem?

Yeah, and the taste of it doesn't do it for me.

-It's very moreish.

-Is it?

-Very filling. But you can't beat this.

'As a food critic and professional greedy man,

'it's my duty to taste this food that seems to have eluded almost all but the Welsh.

'So the moment of truth - my first taste of laverbread.'

Thank you very much.

Oh!

That is one of those real seaside flavours.

You can taste the minerals, it's slightly salty,

very green, very rich,

full of what the Japanese call umami - savouriness. You know it's good for you.

I could get used to this.

I don't know what it is about our traditional dishes

but they usually taste much better than may look

and you can actually get laverbread in some of the posher London shops,

so Jay Rayner could eat it for breakfast, lunch and tea if he wanted.

If you remember the film The Man Who Never Was, you'll have heard of Operation Mincemeat,

one of the greatest wartime deceptions ever attempted.

MI5 made it look as if a plane carrying an important messenger had crashed at sea.

Dan Snow went to Trealaw in the Rhondda Valley

to find out who the unfortunate victim really was.

April 1943. A body was dumped at sea

off the coast of Spain. It was dressed in British uniform.

Attached to his belt was a briefcase crammed with top secret invasion plans.

The secret documents were, of course, false,

designed to hoodwink the Nazis. And that's exactly what they did.

The body was found by fishermen

and the decoy invasion plans were soon in German hands.

The deception was so convincing that Hitler was fooled

into believing Greece was the Allies' invasion target,

leaving the real target of Sicily vulnerable.

Operation Mincemeat has been hailed

as the most successful wartime deception plan ever attempted.

It saved thousands of lives.

But very little is known about its silent hero.

Examining the body,

Nazi spies were convinced he was the high-ranking Major William Martin.

But they were wrong.

The planners of Operation Mincemeat had worked out

if they could convince the Germans that this was a real character

they would be that much more likely to believe

what was in his briefcase, all these fake documents that they had made.

They created this completely false personality,

this person who had never existed. And here he is.

William Martin of the Royal Marines.

-There's his identity card.

-Who's the picture of?

The picture is of a MI5 officer,

who just happened to look a bit like the dead man.

Here you have his watch, his cigarettes, his keys,

but the tour de force was the creation of a love life for him.

So here they have Pam.

She was actually a secretary in MI5 whose photograph was thought

-to be just saucy enough to put in his wallet.

-Wonderful.

And then we've got a completely bogus receipt for a diamond ring

costing £53, 10 shillings and sixpence.

-He's a generous man, I'm not surprised, she's a beautiful woman.

-Absolutely.

These are the love letters that he is carrying on his person when he's found.

"That lovely golden day we spent together, oh, I know it's..."

"I know it's been said before but if only time could sometimes stand still for just a minute."

-So beautiful.

-Isn't it?

-I've got this funny mental image

-of a leather trenchcoat-wearing Gestapo officer reading this out.

-I think that's exactly right.

But this was the kind of grain and the grit that actually convinced them

that, yes, this had been a living, real person.

Although the body appeared to be that of a rich and well-loved hero,

the reality couldn't have been further from the truth.

It was, in fact, Glyndwr Michael, a vagrant from Trealaw in South Wales.

Now, this is the house where Glyndwr Michael lived with his mother at the start of the war.

Not just his mother, but his sister and a brother, all crammed into one tiny room.

-Is it this one here?

-Yup, it's this one here.

This was originally divided into two rooms. There were four of them in here.

That would have been the bedroom at the end and the living area in here.

Four people in this space?!

They lived in conditions of extraordinary poverty.

-They had absolutely nothing.

-There was no father to help bring in money?

-No.

Here we have the only evidence of Glyn Michael's signature.

It's on his father's death certificate in Angleton mental hospital.

It appears that Glyndwr Michael himself might also have suffered from mental illness.

His mother died in 1940. He slipped through the cracks.

There was no-one to look out for him.

He wound up destitute, homeless, and really desperate.

He was found having poisoned himself with rat poison in a disused

warehouse in Kings Cross.

This shows this young man, he was 34, on a mortuary gurney

dressed in British uniform just before he is about to set sail

-on Operation Mincemeat.

-Amazing.

Glyndwr Michael was the perfect hero for Operation Mincemeat.

He was a nobody and nobody would miss him.

Did anyone ask permission from his nearest surviving relatives to use his body?

There is no evidence that anyone asked anybody's permission to use the body.

It was simply expropriated for a wartime operation.

Operation Mincemeat played a vital part in the successful invasion of Sicily.

Two months later Mussolini had fallen and Italy had surrendered.

An unknown vagrant had helped to change the course of World War II.

In life he had been abandoned by his country, but in death

he had done Britain proud.

A really haunting tale there.

The true identity of Major Martin was kept secret for a long time after the war.

It was only in 1998 that his gravestone in Spain was finally

corrected with the engraving,

"Glyndwr Michael served as Major William Martin".

Recognition at last.

Military tactics have not always been as subtle as Operation Mincemeat.

In medieval days it was more of a case of chucking boulders at your enemy.

Joe Crowley was catapulted back in time for a lesson

in siege warfare at Caerphilly Castle.

Any excuse to wear tights!

'Medieval warfare was a grim and bloody business.

'The skill of the cavalry and swordsmen prevailed

'and human life was cheap when there was a war to be won.

'But by the 13th century all that changed.

'Battles got much more challenging.'

By the Middle Ages a nobleman's home was literally his castle.

Formidable ones were being built like this one here in Caerphilly.

They could hold out for months under siege.

Attackers needed a new approach.

-Heave!

-Time to bring on the big guns.

-Heave!

-'The mighty trebuchet.'

'A formidable medieval siege engine capable of demolishing

'a castle wall, it changed the face of warfare.'

Prepare to loose!

'Seen in action during The Crusades it was copied for battles nearer to home.'

Loose!

Previously sieges were often just like blockades

and it was necessary to starve a garrison out.

But the trebuchet was such an efficient and deadly weapon

it could shorten the length of the siege and produce a devastating conclusion.

There had been smaller siege engines but the trebuchet was a giant.

It measured 60 feet high.

It could hurl 100 pound stones a distance of up to 300 feet,

but that was not all.

They could propel fire, beehives, and even dead animals.

The point about firing animal carcasses

is if they are decaying, they land inside, they splatter everywhere.

You have the potential of spreading disease amongst a garrison.

That was often more fatal than any other form of attack in the Middle Ages.

They also had a form of chemical warfare. Sometimes they would use lime.

Lime burns when it touches the skin

so it is a horrible effect and very demoralising.

'How exactly did they work?'

They would have built them off-site. They would have built them flatpack.

This is what we are trying to demonstrate. It would be in a flatpack format.

You are telling me that flatpack was once at the centre of military hardware?

It was when you look at the medieval war machine.

'Malcolm Beacham from the Company Of Chivalry is an expert

'on medieval life.

'He has created a model of a trebuchet.'

The most important thing with a medieval siege weapon

is a counterbalance box.

When you pull the arm down you have a counterbalance.

'When the huge weight of the counterbalance drops,

'the arm is released with powerful force.'

-Look at that.

-There we have it.

-That was perfect.

The trebuchet could strike terror into the hearts of those

hiding within castle walls.

In 1304 Edward I took a trebuchet to besiege Stirling Castle.

When the Scots saw it they were so terrified they wanted to surrender.

He was so proud of his siege engine called Warwolf that when he had it shipped up from the South

and assembled he would not accept a surrender and insisted on seeing it used to batter down the castle.

But the trebuchet had another important influence.

As they got more accurate and lethal castles like Caerphilly needed

to raise their game to keep the enemy out.

One of the issues of the trebuchet is that because it was

so good at knocking down walls, you get the development of concentric castles -

You have one wall inside another such as at the castle at Caerphilly.

This means that if attackers did break into one area

of the castle they were then confronted by another.

There is only one thing for it.

I cannot leave without experiencing the mighty power of the trebuchet.

Time for battle.

And of course the first rule in medieval warfare - always dress the part.

And heave!

'This is really hard work.

'The counterbalance weighs a huge two and a half tons.'

Heave! Heave!

'Imagine doing this with arrows raining down on you.'

Clear the engine!

It is on!

Here we go. The moment I have been waiting for.

Prepare to loose! Loose!

CHEERING

-Good work, lads. Next castle then?

-Indeed.

-Come on then.

You cannot take Joe Crowley anywhere!

But it was pretty impressive how far they flung that rock.

You will be pleased to hear that no ducks were injured during the making of that film!

We're coming towards the end of the show,

but before we go let's have something more refined.

Turner is one of England's greatest landscape artists.

In 1792 he made a long and arduous trip to Wales.

Gyles Brandreth went to Tintern to find out why.

Joseph Mallord William Turner is regarded by many as Britain's most gifted landscape artist.

Dramatic, powerful paintings like Snowstorm, Norham Castle,

and Rain, Steam And Speed

have a unique place in our national heritage.

John Ruskin called him "The only perfect landscape painter whom

"the world has ever seen".

But I am going in search of the precocious young Turner who was

so driven to be a successful artist that he came here to

the ruins of Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire

aged just 17 to make a name for himself.

Turner was born in 1775 in London's bustling Covent Garden.

He was the son of a humble barber and wig maker.

But his father quickly spotted the boy's precocious talent and did everything he could to promote it.

Turner's father was hugely ambitious for his son

and very supportive of his talents.

He was an audacious talent, Turner.

He joined the Royal Academy at the age of 14

which was the youngest that anybody had ever joined the Academy up to that point.

He then gained an apprenticeship as an architectural draughtsman,

so learning to draw very detailed and precise pictures.

The young Turner knew that self promotion was crucial,

but his appearance was against him. He was short and slight and hated his own portrait

saying, "It's no use taking such a little figure as mine.

"It will do my drawings an injury."

But the young man who hated images of himself knew which images would

capture the public's imagination,

which is why the 17-year-old boy came here to Tintern in 1792.

It was a popular tourist landmark.

He travelled 130 miles from his home in Covent Garden by coach,

and then by pony, to get here.

He knew that other artists had painted the ruined abbey before.

He knew that these were recognisable images of recognisable

landscapes that he could make money from.

So he came to explore it for himself

and to find his own way of doing those images.

From his original sketches Turner created four watercolours

of Tintern Abbey.

One of the most celebrated

is the Chancel and Crossing of Tintern Abbey,

Looking towards the East Window,

completed in 1794.

You can see in Turner's images of Tintern Abbey that his architectural training allowed him

to depict with great detail and skill the architectural details.

He's very precise in the way that he renders those sorts of forms.

But in another way it is a very romanticised and classicised image.

You can begin to see

hints of Turner's later work -

his use of light and the way that he illuminates the forms.

By the end of the 1790s Britain was at war with France,

so travel to the continent was virtually impossible.

People were looking to the native landscape more and more as an escape.

Turner even featured tourists in the painting

to give it a sense of scale.

But while he painted these romanticised images,

his own experience would have been less comfortable.

He travelled by pony with just a small bag of clothes and his sketchbook.

He would brave the weather and explore to find the most

evocative, exciting, atmospheric landscapes he could.

He was happy to rough it for his art.

Many people regarded this young man from humble origins as a genius,

but it was more complicated than that.

Throughout his life he worked incredibly hard at his craft.

It was not just a case of a born talent.

He put a lot of effort and energy into exploring and innovating and experimenting with his techniques.

Turner the boy draughtsman lived to be a grand old man of 76.

He was prolific and prosperous. He became known as the painter of light.

What he achieved began here in the ruins of Tintern Abbey.

A beautiful place. Well worth the long pony ride.

That is all we have got time for.

But BBC Wales do make lots of films for The One Show

so keep tuning in, weekdays at 7pm.

I am sure there will be more gems coming your way shortly.

Thanks for watching this very special edition.

We have really enjoyed putting it together.

From Wales on The One Show, nos da, goodbye.

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