TODAY is the seventieth anniversary of VE Day, the official end of the Second World War in Europe, prompting, in Churchill's words, "The greatest outbreak of joy in the history of mankind." Celebrations erupted throughout the country.

Here are the impressions of an 11-year-old Londoner, Iris Bruce, of one such event, recalled in 2005 (from the BBC Archive, WW2 People's War).

VE NIGHT

I'm going to see a bonfire

A bonfire on a hill

To celebrate VE night

The memory lingers still

We'd never seen a firework

Or pretty coloured rain

The only rockets that we knew

Inflicted deadly pain

We'd seen the dockside burning

Incendiaries in the street

But to dance around that bonfire

We thought a wondrous treat

The searchlights that had chased the planes

Made patterns in the sky

The church bells, hooters, sirens

We heard on hilltop high

We sang and danced and laughed and cried

As we went down the hill

And dawn was breaking far away

That memory lingers still