Keeping It Real Episode 2: Nick Speakman

Welcome back to Keeping It Real: The Podcast, a project by The Keep Military Museum Young Historians!

This week’s episode features Nick Speakman, a museum volunteer with a unique relationship to the building. As well as being a long time museum volunteer supporting the work at The Keep in countless ways, Nick also lived here during his National Service in the 1950s, when the museum building was still a barracks for the Dorsetshire Regiment.

Listen to Nick below describe living on the museum site, talk about travelling to Germany in the post-war era, and working as a colonial police officer in Tanzania.

Last week’s episode was an interview with Christopher Jary. Throughout the episode Christopher mentions several books he’s written- Nick is also involved in the publishing work done at the museum, and discusses some of the books Christopher mentioned. Their most recent project is So Red a Road, and Nick also discusses the process of working with Christopher to produce D-Day Spearhead Brigade, Roys Boys, Yells Bells and Smells, and Bullshit Baffles Brains.

This podcast project was entirely led by teenagers, who are members of The Keep Military Museum Young Historians. The group led each step of the process, and decided to start interviewing the Museum’s volunteers- speaking to people who served with the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, have volunteered at the Museum, have strong memories of the Museum building, and remember living through the Second World War.

Young Historians is a history club for 14-18 year olds who are interested in history, museums, military history, and gaining practical museum experience while still in education. Young Historians is free to attend and everyone is welcome- for more information contact Flora Scott on admin@keepmilitarymuseum.org.

The episode can also be found on our YouTube channel here!

To listen to episode 1 with Christopher, find it here!