By spending ever more time with Second World War 'secret warriors', the knowledge Martyn Cox gained about the contexts of his interviewees’ wartime exploits led to him learning his WW2 history 'on the hoof' .... and he gradually became strong enough in certain specialist subjects to regularly advise the producers of TV documentaries and news features, biographers and academics.

 

Martyn has also worked with two leading battlefield and history tour company to devise and guide three 'SOE and resistance' tours in France.

In June 2010 he met Professor Rod Kedward, Britain's leading resistance historian, who introduced Martyn to academic perspectives on wartime resistance, and ever since then he's been closely with involved with the development of the Resistance Studies initiative at the University of Sussex.

 

Sad to say, Rod Kedward passed away in April 2023; but his own oral history archive, plus Martyn's forty filmed interviews with French resisters, have already become two of the founding collections in the Archive of Resistance Testimony at The Keep, which is also at Falmer, near Brighton. Martyn was also invited to become an Advisory Board member for the development of The Centre of Resistance Studies at Sussex.

Having already instigated a number of successful commemorative and educational initiatives over several years, Martyn Cox formally joined forces with Martyn Bell in 2014 to found an educational charity, The Secret WW2 Learning Network - or "Secret WW2" for short - www.secret-ww2.net

Martyn continues to advise museums and other organisations in Britain and France on the development of temporary and permanent exhibitions, commemorative events; documentary productions, all while also making his own educational films based on his unique archive of filmed veteran interviews.

Martyn Cox grew up in Surrey, Leeds and Cyprus. At twenty he was working for one of the BBC's first local radio stations, and after gaining a degree in Psychology and Sociology he spent ten years in the music industry in marketing and promotion.

This was followed by more than twenty years as a writer, producer or director of several hundred music videos, corporate films and ads. He's also been the Associate Producer of documentaries for Channel 4 and Discovery.

Despite having enjoyed scores of classic war films when he was young, Martyn had little interest in 'real history' while at school and university; but all this would change in 2001 when he volunteered to film oral history interviews with six women who’d been wartime members of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry - aka the FANY.

The first of these was the late Lise Villameur MBE, LdeG, CdeG. In 1942 the then Lise de Baissac had been one of the first two women to parachute into occupied France as an agent of the Special Operations Executive, the WW2 secret service specially created in 1940 to support resistance in occupied countries.

The rest … as they say … became history. He was so enthralled and inspired when he started to learn about SOE's roles ... and also the clandestine flights undertaken by the RAF's ‘Special Duties’ squadrons ... that Martyn's own mission became to film as many more interviews as possible with men and women who'd each played a part in either top secret or lesser known aspects of the Second World War.

He then became determined - in fact passionate - that what was already becoming a unique (and by now acclaimed) oral history collection should be made accessible as a digitised online learning resource.

 

This is gradually being realised after teaming up with not only the University of Sussex but also the Legasee Educational Trust; and in 2016, Legasee made a successful Heritage Lottery Fund application which resulted in the creation of an online archive, plus the creation of an App - Spooks, Spies & Videotape.

Also in 2016, Martyn instigated the Secret WW2 charity's Brighton's Secret Agents initiative, following his realisation that four wartime secret agents had all been born in Brighton. This led to an innovative programme of prestigious community outreach events to accompany the installation of four commemorative blue plaques.

At the end of 2016, Martyn was elected a Board member of the SOE F Section association in France, la Fédération Nationale Libre Résistance.

In 2019 Martyn's content contributions and promotional work for the Legasee Educational Trust were recognised when he was given the title of Ambassador for Legasee.

 

Also that year, during the run-up to the commemoration of D-Day 75, Martyn Cox and Legasee's founder Martin Bisiker assisted the producers and researchers handling the BBC's coverage of the special events in Portsmouth and Normandy on June 5th and 6th. They were simultaneously working on a range of learning initiatives for the Royal British Legion, and Martyn also produced a D-Day 75 film about the little known but significant role of the Royal Navy's landing craft at Omaha Beach.

Martyn lives in SW France with his wife, their three dogs, and far more rescued cats than they'll ever admit to. His involvement with so many initiatives necessitated returning to the UK very frequently, until travel restrictions started to be imposed during the pandemic. But ever since Orange kindly installed a high speed fibre optic internet connection to his bit of rural France, Martyn has been able to work almost solely from home - 'remotely' in more ways than one.