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Interest in our ancestry is opening new doors for historians and giving their work greater exposure according to Professor Lucy Noakes, who recently helped actor Helena Bonham Carter discover her grandmother鈥檚 wartime experiences for Channel 4.

Working on is just the latest in a series of television and radio opportunities Professor Noakes has been involved in.

The Channel 4 documentary celebrated the extraordinary wartime stories of grandparents of four well-known faces. In the episode with Helena Bonham Carter, Professor Noakes uncovered and described the experiences of Violet Bonham Carter when she was working as an air raid warden during the Blitz.

Speaking about the experience of spending a day filming in London, Professor Noakes, from the Department of History, said: 鈥淚t was great fun working with Helena Bonham Carter 鈥� she was very interested in her family鈥檚 history and the history of the war more widely and asked loads of good questions.鈥�

Professor Noakes is regularly invited onto television and radio shows: 鈥淭he experience and memory of the First and Second World wars 鈥� my research area 鈥� seem to be perennially popular in Britain so, in common with lots of other historians, I get a lot of requests to contribute to programming.鈥�

One of the media appearances she is most proud of is an episode of Blitzed Britain in which Professor Noakes鈥� contribution: 鈥渉elped to dispel some of the myths of World War II as Britain鈥檚 鈥榝inest hour鈥� when the British people were 鈥榓ll in it together鈥�, which have become so beloved of many British nationalists.鈥�

Describing the benefits, Professor Noakes said: 鈥淚 think that what I enjoy most is the opportunity to get my research across to a much larger audience than you would usually reach through more traditional academic routes.

鈥淚t鈥檚 also great to work with production companies that have the resources to track down and use audio visual sources that would be much harder to use as an individual academic. 

鈥淚t鈥檚 important to reach people through different mediums, like television, radio and podcasts. It seems that we are living in an age when people are often given false or misleading information masquerading as fact, so it鈥檚 satisfying to be able to intervene, to reach a wide audience, and to provide them with well researched, factually accurate, information.鈥�