A DOCUMENTARY about the mysterious death of a Barry journalist who was ‘the eyes and ears’ of former Prime Minister David Lloyd George is set to air tonight.

Gareth Jones, who grew up on Porth-Y-Castell, was killed in China in 1935 just before his 30th birthday.

Jones had been key in exposing the poverty and starvation of millions of Ukrainian peasants in the Soviet Union due to Stalin’s Five Year Plan in the early 1930s.

He also covered the rise of Hitler and once shared a flight with the dictator shortly after he had become Chancellor of Germany, and just three days before the burning of the Reichstag in 1933.

The BBC Four Storyville documentary, titled ‘Hitler, Stalin and Mr Jones’, investigates who killed Gareth Jones, and charts the life of the Barry journalist.

Filming for the documentary took place in Barry, St Donats, Llantwit Major, Ukraine and the exact spots where Jones was first kidnapped and then shot.

Nigel Colley, Jones’s great-nephew, was an advisor to the production of the 80-minute documentary, which took 15 months to research and film.

"He stood up for the Jews in Germany and the peasants in the Soviet Union as Stalin closed off the borders and went in and stopped the food," said Mr Colley.

"He was in a minority and stuck to his guns and exposed the famine, and is now being recognised as a hero of Ukraine.

"But Gareth was airbrushed into historical obscurity," he added.

"Now his memory is being researched and he’s being seen as a hero, and not just in the Ukraine, but across the world too."

Fluent in German, French and Russian, and with First Class Honours from Cambridge University, he was appointed as a Foreign Affairs Advisor to former Prime Minister David Lloyd George in 1930, and from 1932 until 1933.

"He was the eyes and ears of the former Prime Minister, travelling abroad on his behalf," said Mr Colley.

"Unlike many British people he could speak Russian fluently, which hardly any of the foreign correspondents could do. He could go off the beaten track and ask questions."

After returning from a trip to Russia, where he began to notice the terrible conditions and famine, he published several uncensored articles in The Times about the famine genocide and the reasons behind it. He went on to write several more exposes of political atrocities, as well as charting the rise of Hitler.

But mystery surrounded his death in 1935, with the BBC documentary set to shed light on how it happened.

* ‘Hitler, Stalin and Mr Jones’ will be shown on BBC Four at 9pm tonight (Thursday, July 5).