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
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