The next talk to the Ventnor & District Local History Society will be by M. J. Trow.

In July 1940, Britain’s survival was on the brink. Driven out of mainland Europe, the British armed forces were in no position to stave off invasion by the Germans.

The Prime Minister promised to fight on the beaches and everywhere else, but the SS were drawing up a hit-list of the country’s most wanted, 2,380 men and women who were the most implacable foes of the Third Reich.

Winston Churchill was there, of course. So was Noel Coward. The singer/actor Paul Robeson made the list along with European refugees who had already escaped the Nazis once. And three people on the List lived in the Isle of Wight, possibly the Wehrmacht’s first landing place.

A similar list for Poland contained 61,000 names. All of them were dead by the summer of 1940. Free to members, visitors welcome at £2