Dominic Sandbrook

Well, if you think about people who were killed in the First World War, especially people who were killed while not fighting.

Which is true, both of Franz Ferdinand and of Edith Cavill.

There aren't that many who have statues.

Edith Cavell does, of course, have a statue.

She has a statue of Trafalgar Square.

And every day, I guess, every year, hundreds of thousands of people must walk past that statue.

They probably barely give it a second's thought.

Or they walk past the statue of her in King's Domain in Melbourne in Australia.

Or they walk along one of the countless Rue Edith Cavell in France or in Belgium.

Or the schools and hospitals that are named after her

You know, all over the world in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, in the United States and here in Britain.

Yes.

So she became, I think, the great martyr of the First World War.

Perhaps she's not as well known now as she used to be.

But the story behind her martyrdom is an interesting one because it's a story, as we said, of espionage and secret machinations.

And it's a complicated story.

And let's get into it.

We'll start with the place where it all happens.

And that is plucky little Belgium.

So people who listen to our first series about the Great War may recall that at the beginning of the war,