Below all part of the BBC 4 "War Graves Season" This October

Digging Up The Dead

For the first time since its bloody civil war and the long years of brutal dictatorship, Spain is officially examining its past with the exhumation of its mass graves.

Michael Portillo, whose father was exiled for fighting for democracy after Spain fell to Franco 70 years ago, returns to examine the effect that this opening up of old wounds will have on a country which had chosen to forget.

The mass graves, some of which contain more than 4,000 bodies, have remained untouched, until now. Travelling to his father's home town of Madrigal, Granada and Malaga, Michael talks to ordinary people about their memories and their desire to recover the bodies of their loved ones.

Also, as part of BBC Four's War Graves Week, Storyville's Section 60 – Arlington National Cemetery provides an intimate glimpse into the grief, pride and loss suffered by visitors to the United States' largest military burial ground.

The season also includes The Children Who Fought Hitler, which tells the forgotten story of a heroic battle to help liberate Europe from the Nazis fought by the children of the British Memorial School. The school served a unique horticultural community of former-First World War soldiers and their families who tended the war graves in Ypres.