1. Captain Charles Upham VC & Bar: 1908 - 1994

Charles Upham was one of only three men to have ever won the Victoria Cross twice. But for all his remarkable exploits on the battlefield, Upham was a shy and modest man, embarrassed when asked about the actions he had been decorated for.

He won his first VC was for outstanding leadership amid fighting in Crete in May 1941. Carrying a bag of grenades, Upham first attacked a German machine-gun nest, killing eight paratroopers, then destroyed another. He then helped carry a wounded man to safety before running half a mile under fire to save a company from being cut off.

The following year, Upham, captured a German position in north Africa, and continued to fight and stay with his men, even after his arm had been shattered by a machine gun.

When King George VI was conferring Upham's second VC he asked Maj-Gen Sir Howard Kippenberger, his commanding officer: “Does he deserve it?” “In my respectful opinion, Sir,” replied Kippenberger, “Upham won this VC several times over.”

Havildar Lachhiman Gurung VC: 1997 - 2010

Havildar Lachhiman Gurung won the Victoria Cross while serving with the Gurkha Rifles in Burma in 1945.

At 1.20am in the early hours of 13 May 1945, more than 200 Japanese attacked the company position near the Irrawaddy river. Gurung was manning a strategically crucial post, and tried to throw grenades back where they had come from, but the third weapon exploded in his hand, blowing off his fingers, shattering his right arm and severely wounding him in the face, body and right leg. He continued firing regardless and maintained his post on his own until 15 May, helping to force the Japanese into defeat.

Gurung later said: “I had to fight because there was no other way. I felt I was going to die anyway, so I might as well die standing on my feet.

He went on to become a prominent figure in the campaign led by the actress Joanna Lumley to allow former Gurkhas to settle in Britain.

3. Maj-Gen Tony Deane-Drummond 1917 - 2012

Tony Deane-Drummond served with the British Army’s Royal Signals and managed to escape three times from enemy hands during World War II.

He won a DSO and two MCs, one of which was awarded for his courage during Operation “Market Garden”, launched in 1944 with the aim of seizing a 60-mile corridor spanning eight major water obstacles to secure the Allied advance on to the German plain.

4. Mavis Batey 1921 - 2013

Mavis Batey was one of the leading female codebreakers at Bletchley Park, cracking the Enigma ciphers that led to the Royal Navy’s victory at Matapan in 1941.

Aged just 19 when she was recruited to the highly secretive assignment, she was one of the great Bletchley “break-in” experts, who found their way into new codes and ciphers that had never been broken before.

Batey also played a leading role in the cracking of the extraordinarily complex German secret service, or Abwehr, Enigma. Without that break, the Double Cross deception plan which ensured the success of the D-Day landings could never have gone ahead.

But she couldn’t reveal what she had done during the war until the 1970s, when the significance of Bletchley Park was eventually disclosed.

5. Eric Lomax 1919 - 2012

Lomax was a signals officer in Singapore when he was captured in 1942 and made a prisoner at Kanchanaburi camp in Thailand. He suffered horrendous torture at the hands of guards after they found a radio receiver and a map he had made of the Burma-Siam “death railway”.

Lomax had long nursed thoughts of revenge on his wartime Japanese captors, and finally had the chance to act when he came face to face with his principal tormentor. However he chose reconciliation, over retribution, and published a memoir, The Railway Man which inspired a film about his life, starring Colin Firth.

6. Jean Gerard Leigh 1923 - 2012

Jean Gerard Leigh was the woman whose photograph was used to help trick the Germans into falling for one of the greatest deceptions of the Second World War.

Operation Mincemeat, which was to inspire a film called The Man Who Never Was in the 1950s, was devised in the spring of 1943 by two intelligence officers. With Churchill planning to invade Italy through Sicily, a ruse was required to make the Germans believe that the attack would take place elsewhere.

Charles Cholmondeley and Commander Ewen Montagu devised the idea of planting false papers on an “officer” and making it look as if he had died in a plane crash at sea. They obtained a body, gave it military papers and a snapshot of his fiancée, “Pam” (in reality, a photo of Leigh) emerging from the Thames in a one-piece swimsuit.

The deception worked better than anyone had expected. German troops were redeployed to Greece and Sardinia, while Sicily was left thinly defended. A triumphant telegram was sent to Churchill: “Mincemeat swallowed rod, line and sinker.” But Leigh, a young MI5 clerk was required to be involved in a bizarre game of role-playing which had little to do with the main business of bamboozling the Germans.

7. Squadron Leader Peter Tunstall 1918 - 2013

Squadron Leader Peter Tunstall was an inveterate escaper who spent longer in solitary confinement than any other Allied Prisoner of War. He was court-martialled by the Germans on five occasions and became one of the most notable inmates of the infamous Colditz Castle.

Tunstall was captured in August 1940, and when a German officer reminded him that his war was over, he responded: “It damn well is not.” He later commented: “As far as I was concerned, a different type of war had started.

"My first duty was to escape, my second was to be as big a bloody nuisance as possible to the enemy.”

8. Wing Commander Jimmy Flint 1913 - 2013

Wing Commander Jimmy Flint was a bomber pilot who was the only person ever to win two gallantry awards for his actions on a single hellish flight.

The night in question was 5 July, 1941, when Flint and his all-sergeant crew took off in their twin-engined Hampden bomber to attack Osnabruck, and soon after he was awarded an immediate DFM for his “cool courage and determination to strike at the enemy”.

When the full extent of his gallant efforts to save his crew became clear, he was also awarded a George Medal, the citation concluding: “This airman displayed great gallantry, fortitude and disregard of personal safety in his efforts to save his helpless navigator.” Sadly, the navigator succumbed to his wounds.

9. Wing Commander Kenneth Wallis 1916 - 2013

Wing Commander Kenneth Wallis was a wartime bomber pilot who flew 28 missions over Germany. However he became better known after the war as a key figure in the development of the autogyro, which, most famously, he flew as Sean Connery’s stunt double in the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice.

One interviewer observed that if a screenwriter had invented Wallis, with his air of derring-do and rakish white handlebar moustache, they would have been told to come back with a more realistic character. Part Biggles, part Professor Branestawm, he became involved in all kinds of historic events.

10. Sonia d’Artois 1924 - 2014

Sonia d’Artois, codename Blanche, risked her life many times as an SOE agent in German-occupied France in the Second World War.

She was one of the youngest female spies to be sent into France during the war and was never suspected by the local Gestapo while posing as a representative of a Paris fashion house who had been sent to the country to recuperate from an illness. Her main role was as a courier and explosives expert and she would ride on her bicycle for miles on end to ensure key messages got in and out of Britain.