My great grandfather was alone & didn't make it home.... it is so much to take in

Line of Duty's Vicky McClure on wartime POW's camp hell

- NICOLA METHVEN

Vicky McClure is moved to tears as she hears what her great-grandfather endured in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Taiwan.

The Line of Duty star, 40, solves not one but two family mysteries in the BBC’s new series of Who Do You Think You Are?

She is horrified to hear how badly her mother Carol’s grandfather Harry Millership was treated after being taken prisoner in Singapore along with 130,000 others in 1942.

The actress describes her journey, which takes her around the country and also on a 17-hour flight to the far side of Asia, as an “incredible, disturbing, life-changing experience”.

She admitted: “There’s been a lot of it I’ve not found easy. For all the action-packed shows that I do and the fact that I might seem hard as nails in certain things – I probably couldn’t be further from that.”

Prior to being called up for Army service, Harry had worked in a Yorkshire coal mine from the age of 14.

After working down the pit for 18 years he was married and had five children. By then he had the dangerous job of “timber drawer”, meaning he moved the wooden props which held up the roof.

Vicky, who has previously done a TV show alongside her sailor grandfather Ralph, now 97, who described his part in D-Day, says: “I feel really proud of my roots and the fact that Harry and his family were real workers, working hard, f***ing hard. It’s kind of blowing my mind.”