Dominic Sandbrook

But the Germans dismantled the Belgian economy.

They basically moved loads of machinery and equipment to Germany, and they deport more than 100,000 Belgian workers to German war factories.

They even demand that the Belgians shift their time zone.

So by an hour from GMT,

to Central European time.

And for ordinary Belgians, these are grim years, the years of occupation.

It's maybe not like being occupied by Nazi Germany, but there's a sense of national humiliation.

There's an economic collapse.

There are massive food shortages.

One way that Belgians deal with this, I mean, Belgium is a very Catholic country.

It's how they define themselves against their neighbors in the Netherlands.

And there's a sort of revival of Catholicism, which actually plays a part in today's story.

And the other way they respond, of course, is by resistance.

And we should be coming to this exactly how the Belgians resist.

But resistance is where today's heroine, Edith Cavell, comes in.

And she, I have to say, is a very, very unlikely Belgian resistance hero.

So she's a Victorian, born in 1865 in a village outside Norwich called Swardeston.

And her father was the vicar there.

He was called Frederick Cavill.

He was the vicar there for almost half a century.