ITS role in the fight against Hitler is fading into the mists of history, but now thanks to a TV reality show the part that the Scottish highlands played in training British spies preparing for covert action behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied Europe is finally being celebrated.

The television show, Secret Agent Selection: WW2, puts participants through gruelling World War Two special forces training. The show is shot in the Cairngorms and Aberdeenshire.

Based on the covert Special Operations Executive (SOE), the programme sees contestants cut off from the modern world and taken to the wilderness where they endure interrogation, use James Bond gadgets, try code breaking, learn the art of silent killing, fire live ammunition and use explosives.

Participants included a former soldier who lost a leg in battle, a junior doctor, a drag artist and a Scots graduate who now works on complex financial software.

SOE spies carried out acts of sabotage, assassination and subversion, including blowing up bridges and organising guerrilla warfare. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who set up the SOE, ordered them to “set Europe ablaze”.

Producer Michael Fraser said: “We were really drawn to SOE as a subject matter. The more we looked into it, the more we wanted to tell the incredible stories of the ordinary people who were transformed into SOE agents during World War Two.

“We wondered whether the best way to bring these extraordinary stories to life for a modern audience would be to resurrect their training programme. It was nuanced and complex and more about psychology than traditional soldiering which appealed to us.”

One of the participants is 21-year-old mathematics and computer science graduate Alistair Stanley from Glasgow. The former Cambridge student, who now works as a software engineer in London, went to an open casting at the suggestion of fellow students.

He said: “They publicised it at university and some of my friends grabbed me and said this is something you’d be good at. They know I’m outdoorsy, and I am good at problem solving. And there’s the romanticised idea of Cambridge mathematics students being whisked away during the war to serve the country.

“For me it was the personal challenge. I wanted to test myself. I found out that I respond well under pressure...But this was a different sort of pressure and I was proud of the way I reacted.”

The former Glasgow High School pupil, who is also an accomplished musician having achieved Grade 8 in piano and clarinet, had aspirations to be a pilot in the Royal Air Force, like his great grandfather, however at 6’ 4’’ he's too tall. “I found out I’m too tall to fly fighter jets,” said Stanley, “but I haven’t ruled signing up to the military in the future”.

He was reluctant to reveal how well he did on the show, which is aired on BBC Two on Mondays at 9pm, but he described the experience as a “once in a lifetime opportunity”.

He added: “We were immersed in the time period. We were away from technology. We were completely cut off for several weeks. It was one of the best experience I’ve had to date.”

'THEY WERE ALL LINED UP AND SHOWN THE PEN-GUN'

The filming took place in June last year at the Alvie and Dalraddy Estates in the Cairngorms and Forglen Estate in Aberdeenshire.

Sarah O'Reilly, 32, who has managed Forglen for five years, said: “I came down most days and watched the external filming. In one scene they were all lined up and shown the pen-gun. It was very loud and rather scary because we didn’t have the context. Of course, Forglen is normally a quiet, tranquil place. It’s a lovely location.”

The huge privately-owned house was also used as a location for filming. The Russell family who own the estate have a tea plantation in Malaysia and only spend part of the year at Forglen. The opulently decorated upper floors of the house are where the Russells live but a large part of the show was filmed in the unoccupied basement.

O’Reilly said: “There will be a lot of people who will watch it and wonder why parts of it looks so grey, with concrete walls – it’s because there are three floors and parts of it are not used, such as the servants’ quarters.

The crew arrived weeks before filming to prepare the location. O’Reilly explained: “The art department had to prep the rooms to make it look like the 1940s. They stayed in the house and in the cottages on the grounds, and used a lot of rooms for storage. They also stayed in local hotels. There was a crew of about 40 at any one time. It was an amazing three weeks.”

THE REAL SOE AGENTS

SOE agents were men and women from all walks of life who became the forerunners of today's special forces, capable of deadly espionage in Nazi-occupied Europe.

The became known as The Baker Street Irregulars, because of the location of the SEO’s London office, and as “Churchill's secret army” because he commissioned the clandestine operation.

They were trained at country estates up and down the UK, including at sites in the Scottish Highlands.

Details of the covert operation were top secret for sixty years and viewers of Secret Agent Selection: WW2 can now see what recruits went through.

Among the SOE’s public successes was the destruction of a power station in France. The agents who killed Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi architect of the Holocaust, were trained by the SOE.

Despite this the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) - now known as MI6 – viewed SOE with suspicion. Head of the SIS, Sir Stewart Menzies (who was the inspiration for 'M' in the Bond films) was concerned the activities of SOE graduates would undermine their operations and described the SOE as “amateur, dangerous, and bogus”. However, Churchill was firmly behind the SOE and it survived until 1946.