What Did Dame Vera Lynn teach us?
This week in the UK we lost someone very special to the country’s recent history, the singer Dame Vera Lynn at the age of 103.
What an icon she has been to our country across the years since the Second World War and an icon for women in general. She was a millionaire though you would never have known, she was from the East End of London, though her accent during the war years and since didn’t suggest that — and she kept true to her roots for her whole life. She embraced ordinary and, it seems from all of the tributes, was genuinely interested in everyone.
She suffered setbacks. One possible singing tutor told her that ‘that voice could not be trained’ yet she was undetered. She became known through her association with the BBC, as the Forces’ Sweetheart and she sang to the troops via a radio show to keep their spirits up. She visited troops, and choose to visit those who were often forgotten in Egypt, India and Burma.
After the war she continued to campaign and support veterans and although she had a varied career, her association with the war with songs like ‘We’ll Meet Again’ and ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ have endured in the public’s memory of her. My thoughts are with her family and friends at this time — they must be sad yet so very proud.
