Hello it's Helena Bonham Carter. I'm just letting you know that my podcast for BBC Radio 4

History's secret heroes is back with the second series. These are ten news stories of

unsung heroes, acts of resistance, deception, and unbelievable courage.

For the next 10 minutes you'll hear part of the extraordinary story of Ida and Louise Cook,

two opera-loving sisters from England who helped dozens of Jewish people escape

Nazi Germany.

Ida and Louise Cook were born three years apart and grew up in a solid Church of England family,

first in Sunderland, then in Northumberland.

I don't think I'd ever met two sisters who were so close that when one spoke

the other finished the sentence. Mani Meckler is an opera singer who became close to the Cook sisters in their later years.

Ida was a more aggressive one, stronger one, a very strong face and personality, where Louise was a wee bit softer and she would always

sit there and sort of like lick her lips. Ida would speak and Louise would

correct her. They just became their best

companions on everything. After the girls left school, the family moved to London.

Ida and Louise found work in the civil service.

They carry themselves as very plain, very no-nonsense British women.

Isabel Vincent wrote Overture of Hope, a biography of the Cook sisters.

They lived with their parents their whole life.

They came of age at a time of so-called surplus women in England.

The First World War resulted in the death of something like 750,000 men.

And there weren't enough men to marry, but also there was never a sense that that they missed

that. You know I don't want to stereotype them as sort of dowdy but that was the first impression I had.

...