About
It's just over twenty years since Martyn Cox became an ‘accidental historian’, having previously worked in the music industry and media production for almost three decades.
In 2001 he volunteered to arrange the filming in Marseille of an oral history interview with Lise Villameur MBE, Ld'H, CdeG - one of the first two Allied women secret agents to parachute into occupied France during the Second World War.
Meeting Lise and recording her testimony was to prove both inspiring and life-changing. Since then Martyn has built up what has become a unique archive of professionally filmed testimony sessions with many more WW2 veterans - more than 120 in fact, from Britain, France, Belgium and the USA.
Almost all these remarkable men and women had roles in classified and clandestine wartime operations, most in support of wartime resistance in France, while others had been resisters themselves - hence this unique archive becoming known simply as "Our Secret WW2".
Also since the early 2000s Martyn has instigated or contributed to numerous learning projects, broadcast documentaries, TV and radio news features, books , and significant commemorative events in Britain and France. In 2014 he co-founded a UK registered educational charity, The Secret WW2 Learning Network - aka "Secret WW2".
Whenever devising initiatives to bring the experiences of 'his' secret warriors and their comrades to newer, wider and younger audiences Martyn calls on his background in marketing and promotion - and later as a writer, producer and director - and encapsulates his ongoing activities in one word ... INNOVISTORY.
During late 2019 and throughout 2020 Martyn filmed and edited a series of educational films commissioned by the Royal British Legion, initially produced in readiness for the VE DAY 75 and VJ DAY 75 commemorations.
Each film focused on the experiences of an individual WW2 veteran, and notably on their recollections of the conflict ending and returning home - or in some cases having to establish a brand new home in another country.


Eight veterans had already been filmed especially for this project and more were planned, but the onset of the limitations imposed by the Covid-19 crisis sadly prevented any further visits to veterans in their homes - let alone any living in care homes.


Instead, additional films were produced by utilising the existing WW2 veteran testimony in Martyn's own filmed oral history archive. Meanwhile the pandemic meant that the RBL was unable to stage its planned live events, and so had to devise online and virtual commemorations instead.
To answer that call Martin Bisiker - Martyn's friend, colleague and kindred spirit who'd founded the Legasee Educational Trust - was able to produce additional films based on veteran interviews in the Legasee archive.


Thankfully, professional video post-production can still be done while 'hunkered down' in a home-office style edit suite - and so Martyn in France plus Martin and another producer/editor in Britain, were able to continue working on far more educational films than the Royal British Legion had at first envisaged for its VE DAY 75 and VJ DAY 75 commemorations.
The following year, 2021, Martyn was invited to present a series of live webinars to history teacher members of the Historical Association, with each presentation based on one or more of the RBL films and other veterans with whom he'd previously filmed.
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