My Grandparent’s War: Toby Jones Review: Astounding family secrets kept coming out

It seems reductive My Grandparents War (Channel 4) as Who Do You Think You Are? in a whale and a core helmet. But when today’s stars go in search of the heroes and heroines of yesteryear, there’s sure to be a lot more khaki than glitter on display. So it was my pleasure, not least Toby Jones found that his grandmother’s story about World War II contained just as many surprises as his grandfather’s.

Doreen Heslewood, known to all and sundry as Dorkee, was 21 when she joined the Entertainments National Service Association and was soon entertaining troops in northern France. She watched the hypnotic effect of Gracie Fields when she came on stage and said, “Hi, guys,” and she was performing just hours before the Germans approached.

ENSA, Jones was informed, had the best code word for just such emergencies: Hamlet. During the night the company marched 150 miles to Boulogne, from where it was evacuated. Two weeks later, she married Jones’ grandfather, Reggie, and Jones’ mother was immediately on her way.

Jones always knew her as a theater animal – her tombstone even says “resting actress”. But it seemed as if she had taken a vow of silence to never discuss any of this with her three daughters. “Neither I nor anyone in my family seems to know the story,” he said with the amused air of someone who had been tricked into revealing secret after secret.

His grandfather’s silence was easier to calculate. Brewer, who became an officer when he enlisted in the artillery, was part of the Indian army that dealt the Japanese their first major defeat at the Battle of Imphal. On the boat home, everyone was instructed not to discuss what they had been through. And he suffered, like many of his contemporaries, from what we now know to have been PTSM, he didn’t.

The pieces of the puzzle were assembled from an incredible array of documentary sources. Dorki even had cameos in a couple of books, while Jones finally discovered from his grandfather’s own testimony how he had a gunshot wound near his mouth (friendly fire, nervous guard).

The only documents that did not surface were the hundreds of love letters that Reggie wrote home to Dorkie and were buried in their shared grave. “Who would want them?” his aunt thought. “The creators of this program?” Jones said. Even without them, this was an eye-opening story.