WELCOME
MAY 2025
“My dear friends, this is your hour.” These were the words of Winston Churchill, broadcast to the nation from Downing Street on the afternoon of VE Day. After six long years, the war in Europe was over and a wave of celebration engulfed Britain. For some the joy was tempered with thoughts of those who had been lost or were still fighting or imprisoned in the far east. But for anyone who was there, it was a day that would live long in the memory.
Sixty years later the BBC tapped into those memories through its vast oral history project, the WW2 People’s War, which compiled the wartime testimonies of 47,000 people. And for our cover feature this month, John Willis has drawn on this archive to explore how Britons experienced that fateful day. You’ll find it on page 22.