A muted celebration of VE Day

It should have been a day of joyous celebration, as communities came together for street parties, concerts and a veterans’ parade. Instead, the 75th anniversary of VE Day in Britain was to be a subdued affair, with families gathered around their televisions, raising virtual toasts and singing from their doorsteps. But the coronavirus lockdown was never going to diminish the sacrifices of a generation, nor dampen the achievements of the heroes of World War II. Commemorations were to kick off mid morning by the RAF, as the Red Arrows perform a flypast over London and modern RAF Typhoon jets fly over Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast. In the afternoon, at 2.55pm, solo buglers, trumpeters and cornet players were to play the Last Post from the safety of their homes as individual pipers play Battle’s O’er from the highest peaks of the four home nations – Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike, Snowdon and Slieve Donard. Dame Joan Collins led the ‘‘Nation’s Toast’’ from the balcony of her London flat to acknowledge the many roles women played in the war. Extracts from Sir Winston Churchill’s victory speech were to be broadcast on television and radio, recreating the moment that the end of the war in Europe was announced on May 8, 1945. The Prince of Wales read extracts from the diary of his grandfather, King George VI. The Royal Albert Hall live-streamed a performance by Katherine Jenkins – the first concert held behind closed doors with no audience in the venue’s history. The singer was also to perform a virtual duet with Dame Vera Lynn. The Queen’s address to the nation was at 9pm, the exact time her father, King George VI, made his radio address to the nation in 1945 to announce victory in Europe. A nationwide singalong of Vera Lynn’s wartime anthem, We’ll Meet Again was to follow.