Now put your books down…and get your gas masks out. Quietly. Now take them carefully out of their boxes - no, no, Isobel, don't drag at it…you show her how to do it, Margaret, will you.

In the lead-up to World War II there ... poisonous gas, so by 1938 the government had issued respirators to every man, woman and child in the nation. More than 40 million gas masks were issued.

The series will explore what life was like for children during the Second World War – how they coped with air raids, evacuation, sheltering in tube stations, rationing, putting sticky tape on their ...