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Tunnel 29: An Evening with Helena Merriman

Tunnel 29: An Evening with Helena Merriman

He's just escaped from one of the world's most brutal regimes. Now, he decides to tunnel back in.

Join award-winning journalist and broadcaster Helena Merriman as she chronicles the incredible true story of an extraordinary escape beneath the Berlin Wall.

Following on from her acclaimed BBC Radio 4 podcast, Tunnel 29, which had 6 million downloads and is soon to be a TV series directed by Johan Renck (dir. Chernobyl), Helena is celebrating her new book of the same name, in conversation with author, scriptwriter, podcaster and political campaigner John O'Farrell.

It's summer, 1962, and Joachim Rudolph, a student, is digging a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Waiting on the other side in East Berlin - dozens of men, women and children; all willing to risk everything to escape.

Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with the survivors, and thousands of pages of Stasi documents, Helena will brilliantly reveal the stranger-than-fiction story of the ingenious group of student-diggers, the glamorous red-haired messenger, the American News network which films the escape, and the Stasi spy who betrays it.

Tunnel 29 is about what happens when people lose their freedom - and how some will do anything to win it back.

'An almost unbelievable story of bravery, endeavour, and humanity... you won't be able to put it down.' Dermot O'Leary