TWO CITIES AT WAR: A HOUSE THROUGH TIME RETURNS TO BBC TWO WITH DAVID OLUSOGA

Two nations. Two cities. Two blocks of flats. Twelve households. All living through one of the most tumultuous periods in modern history: the Second World War.

David Olusoga returns with his popular history series, but this time with a difference. It’s the tale of two apartment blocks, one in London, the other in Berlin, over three decades, from the Roaring Twenties to the aftermath of World War Two.

Using painstaking detective work, David hunts down records for the diverse residents of two buildings in two great cities. The cast of characters includes a soldier, an artist, a Nazi teacher, an African academic, a Jewish refugee, an Italian waiter, a poet, a prisoner of war, a woman spy, and an SS officer.

Europe is at a crossroads and these ordinary people face extraordinary choices: to stay or to go, to speak out or stay quiet, to go to war or fight for peace. Told through their personal experiences, this is the story of the winners and the losers, the persecutors and the persecuted, those who survive and those who don’t.

Episode 1: David Olusoga traces the lives of residents of two apartment blocks – Montagu Mansions in Marylebone, London, and 72 Pfalzburger Strasse in Wilmersdorf, Berlin – to tell the story of the world’s deadliest conflict - the Second World War.

He starts his journey back in the 1920s, examining how the events of the First World War changed the lives of the residents and sowed the seeds of an even greater conflict two decades later. As the Nazi Party emerges, some of the families are placed in terrible danger.

A House Through Time begins Thursday 17th October at 9pm on BBC Two.