I lost my legs to London Underground bomb. In 20 years I’ve learnt a lot.

The explosion on the Circle Line outside Aldgate Underground Station on July 7, 2005, cost seven lives, not including that of the suicide bomber who caused it. But as Martine Wright knows only too well, the death toll could quite easily have been eight.

The most badly injured woman of the 7/7 atrocities, she was also the last survivor to be evacuated by firemen from the mangled remains of the eastbound Tube carriage in the wake of the rush hour carnage caused by Shehzad Tanweer. And with this July marking 20 years since 52 innocent Londoners lost their lives to the terrible events that heralded a new era of Islamic-inspired terror attacks on British cities, it’s a date that has become forever lodged in her mind… for both good and bad.

“I will always have those horrible memories in my head but I will also always think I was lucky,” she tells me ahead of a four-part documentary starting on BBC Two tomorrow that will tell the definitive story of the day. “For some people the 20th anniversary will be the memory of that phone call, that police knock at the door. I am lucky, I survived. I’ve had 20 more years to make new memories.”

On that fateful day, four Islamic terrorists blew up three Tube trains and a bus during the morning rush hour. Nearly 800 people were injured in all. The bombings were the UK’s deadliest terrorist attack on home soil since the 1988 Lockerbie disaster and the first Islamist suicide attacks. This year’s anniversary will be a grim milestone of the events that led to a step-change in security. But for Martine, 52, who lost both her legs in the atrocity, the 2025 anniversary will be different.

“In the past I have gone on holiday to avoid it but not this year,” she tells me over Zoom from her home in Hertfordshire. “This year I will take my elderly parents and family out to dinner to raise a glass to the 52 and to celebrate being here. I will feel upset as I might do on other days but my parents are 88 and 86 now and I am more concerned about how they will feel on the anniversary.

“I find whenever there is a terror attack, and there have been many since, especially when I think of the Manchester Arena attack, I find myself thinking of the families of the victims. My family looked for me for two days not knowing if I was alive.

“When they did eventually find me, they found me with only half a body. Imagine that for them? So it will be my parents I will be worried about on the anniversary.”

Those new memories she refers to include giving birth to a son, her “miracle baby” Oscar, four years after the bombing, gaining her pilot’s licence, taking part in Strictly Come Dancing Sport Relief and, of course, competing in volleyball in the 2012 Paralympics.

Ironically, the day before the attack London had just learned it had won the 2012 Olympic bid. As she read her newspaper on that ill-fated journey to work, Martine vowed to herself to get tickets, never imagining she would end up competing in a Games competition. Away from her sporting successes she has gone on to carve out a new career as a motivational speaker, activist, and ambassador for disabled people.

She’s also become a campaigner for better compensation for victims of the bombings and their families. If ever there was someone who has turned tragedy into triumph, it’s Martine Wright. “I feel I have a duty to talk about it, to help people and to turn what happened into something positive,” she says.

Martine was a 32-year-old international marketing manager and self-confessed “typical London girl about town” when her life changed irrevocably.

Three terrorists separately detonated three homemade bombs in quick succession aboard London Underground trains shortly before 8.50am – on the Circle Line near Aldgate, where Martine was, at Edgware Road, and on the Piccadilly Line near Russell Square. Shehzad Tanweer detonated his device on an eastbound Circle Line train between Liverpool Street and Aldgate at the rear of the second carriage where Martine was sitting.

The explosion killed seven people. Survivor Philip Duckworth was so close to Tanweer that he was blinded in one eye by a fragment of the bomber’s shin-bone.

Later, a fourth terrorist detonated another bomb on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square. What followed was the biggest police investigation in British history as police and security services, fearing more attacks, launched an urgent manhunt.

The new documentary lays bare the confusion, chaos and heroism in interviews with key players including then Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair.

Hungover, late for work and having had to change her route, Martine should never have been on that Circle Line tube just four feet from the bomber. Today she recalls a blinding white light but not the noise of the bomb. And while, thankfully, she doesn’t remember the pain of losing her legs, she has a clear memory of the people surrounding her.

“I can’t believe that in that nanosecond I had enough time to think in my head, ‘What the hell is going on?’” she says. “Obviously I was disoriented and thinking, ‘Where am I?’ I remember the smoke clearing and thinking, ‘Oh, we have had a crash.’

“We weren’t sitting on seats anymore. They were gone and we were sort of in a metal crater. Everything was black. I had a sensation of leaning back. I just remember seeing this trainer and thinking, ‘If my trainer is up there, where are my legs?’

She credits WPC Liz Kenworthy, since retired, for saving her life, staying with her, making tourniquets out of anything to hand to stem the catastrophic blood loss. The WPC saved two passengers that day and she and Martine remain in touch.

“I still see Lizzie. I still see people from the 7/7 club, the club no one wants to be in,” she sighs. “Some have fared better than others. Some are still very angry even to this day.”

Incredibly, Martine holds no resentment towards the men intent on killing and maiming as many lives as possible that day.

“I wasn’t ever angry towards the bombers. What would be the point? They aren’t here,” she explains. “They left behind wives and babies. I know they chose to pull those cords but they must have been manipulated into doing that. They couldn’t have been in their right minds. Terrorism is a shocking thing, but it’s the families of the victims I think about. I don’t have any hatred towards any particular religion or race.”

Instead, she says her anger was directed towards the Government because the victims had to fight to receive their compensation.

“Maybe that was my way of coping, to direct my anger at something I could try and change,” she says. After the blast, Martine was taken to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel and put into an induced coma for ten days. When she woke, she recalls trying to sit up but not being able to physically move. She looked down and saw an empty space where her legs should have been.

A nurse had to break the news that doctors had amputated both legs above her knees. In shock and dosed up on morphine, Martine fell straight back to sleep and it was only the next day the full enormity hit her.

She recalls looking down and seeing where her body just stopped, and of telling her mum over and over she had no legs. “But you are still here, you are still Martine,” her mum told her. She credits the strength of her family for pulling her through.

Her parents moved next door to the Royal London to care for her in those early days.

At first, she admits to feeling anger towards the other victims she met in hospital who had lost just one leg or one foot. But it did not last.

“I had lost both legs above the knee but I quickly realised that while I was the most injured female to have survived the attack others were more psychologically damaged,” she says.

“I almost lost my left arm too and am eternally grateful I didn’t. The surgeon who saved it was supposed to meet the Queen that day but saved my arm instead. I have scars all over my body but this scar on my left arm, it is in the shape of a pair of lips. They asked if I wanted the scar removed but I didn’t. This scar is like my Guardian Angel.”

After almost a year in hospital, two years after the attack, Martine attempted to return to her marketing job. But she had only managed about 45 seconds at her old desk before bursting into tears. “I couldn’t do it, I wasn’t strong enough,” she starts. “Well, not that I wasn’t strong enough, but it seemed like I had survived to do something else. What was the point if I didn’t do something else? I couldn’t go back to that old life. I wasn’t the same. I had to start again and create new memories.”

Among those was having her son Oscar, with her then husband Nick, four years after losing her legs. The couple split quietly two years ago but Nick still lives close to Martine in Tring, Herts, and Oscar and their dog Daisy flit between the two homes.

Speaking publicly for the first time about their split, Martine says: “We are still the best of friends, still go on holiday together and see each other but just not as husband and wife. I wouldn’t say we split because of what happened but we have been through an awful lot together as a couple. But it is all good and I am fine. I look back over the last 20 years and I am at peace with the memories I have made and don’t feel I have lost anything, other than the obvious.”

With her upbeat attitude, she tends to focus on what she can do rather than what she cannot. “The only time I feel I have missed out is when I see people running or wandering aimlessly looking at their phones, where for me just going outside is like navigating the Himalayas.” She adds with a smile: “But I don’t miss wearing high heels. I never liked wearing heels.” Martine still uses public transport and compares her first time on a train in her wheelchair following the attacks with her experiences now.

“I had free tickets to Wimbledon and I didn’t want to miss out. We got the Overground, not the Underground so it was okay,” she says. “I glanced at that corner seat where I sat but I did it. Recently I went on the Northern Line down to London Bridge and back up again to north London. I can do it but it isn’t easy and I still don’t like the tunnels.”

* 7/7: The London Bombings starts at 9pm tomorrow on BBC Two and continues on Monday, with the remaining two episodes on January 13-14. All episodes are available to watch on BBC iPlayer.