A moving piece by Sheila Hancock on VE day and how she experienced it as a young girl.
She makes us see how VE day meant a difficult-to-navigate end to an unbearable strain, not a glorious triumph that healed all wounds. Beautifully written. Concrete childhood memories that make us feel the complexity of that time.
She ends by talking of herself "as a wartime child who, along with her contemporaries, will soon be gone, taking our painful memories with us."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/03/ve-day-second-world-war-sheila-hancock