Journalist Wallace Carroll had a career that spanned 45 years as a journalist. His first foreign posting, in 1929, was to London with the United Press newswire service. Throughout the 1930s, he covered the major events in Europe and witnessed the Spanish Civil War first-hand. Posted back to London, he dictated his early reports of the Blitz from his office rood top. Carroll had a knack for being in places at the right time.

His talents and connections got him noticed, and he finished the war working for the US government with the Office of War Information. Here, he was tasked with counteracting German propaganda and conducting 'physiological warfare'.

Joining me is Mary Llewellyn McNeil.

Mary has written the biography of Carroll, Century's Witness: The Extraordinary Life of Journalist Wallace Carroll.

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As some of you may know, I am also a First World War historian, and the academic history of the war can be very different from the public perspective, which dwells on the first two years of the war. 

Forgetting the victories of 1917 and 1918 is not new; it is something the British army did during the inter-war period. Added to this corporate amnesia, there was very little discussion in Britain on who the army might be expected to fight. All this culminated in 1939 with a British army unprepared for war and the defeat in France in 1940.

Joining me once more is Robert Lyman, who, with Richard Dannatt, has written Victory to Defeat: The British Army 1939-40. The book is a compelling account of the mismanagement of the British army from the end of the First World War to the start of the next war.

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