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00:00:01We are interrupting our programs to bring you a newsflash.
00:00:05Couldn't be in a better place because Whitehall is Whitehall.
00:00:09Oh, thank you very much.
00:00:11This is the BBC Home Service.
00:00:14We're interrupting programs to make the following announcement.
00:00:18Do you want some level?
00:00:19No, I think I'll have to.
00:00:21It is understood that in accordance with arrangements
00:00:25between the three great powers,
00:00:27an official announcement will be broadcast by the Prime Minister
00:00:31at 3 o'clock tomorrow, Tuesday afternoon, the 8th of May.
00:00:36In view of this fact,
00:00:38tomorrow will be treated as Victory in Europe Day.
00:00:42On the 7th of May, 1945,
00:00:45after six years of suffering and hardship,
00:00:48the war in Europe was coming to an end.
00:00:52Blue skies around the corner
00:00:55The following day, Tuesday the 8th of May,
00:00:58was declared to be Victory in Europe Day.
00:01:02It was, let's have a party.
00:01:04You know, we should be able to celebrate.
00:01:06We're entitled to celebrate after all we've been through.
00:01:10Don't you feel happy to be...
00:01:12Everyone was determined.
00:01:14The war's over, we're going to enjoy it now.
00:01:17I don't know why I wasn't rushing around kissing soldiers and things, but I wasn't.
00:01:24VE Day meant the promise of a brighter future.
00:01:29If you were my age, it meant that you didn't have to go out and try and shoot people.
00:01:34It was just the most blissful time.
00:01:36Because we were free.
00:01:38Blue skies around the corner
00:01:41The years ahead proved tougher than anyone could have guessed.
00:01:45In fact, it's far worse now than it was during the war.
00:01:49But Victory had launched the country on a new path.
00:01:52And the Victory generation would soon be helping to create a brighter future.
00:01:57We knew we'd been deprived of so much during the war.
00:02:02And we were bloody well not going to be deprived of anything afterwards.
00:02:21I was ten when the war ended.
00:02:23And I had a huge wall chart on the wall of our kitchen.
00:02:28Well, it was the only room downstairs actually.
00:02:30Kitchen we called it.
00:02:32And I used to chart the progress of the Allied advance across Europe.
00:02:35The BBC had a bulletin every day where they'd tell you exactly what the movements were.
00:02:39And when it started moving the right way, I got very obsessed by that.
00:02:42So I'd mark in red all the way along there.
00:02:45The Germans were black and we were red.
00:02:49Michael Parkinson was at home in Yorkshire when he heard the news.
00:02:53I remember on the day that war was ended, I was really cross because they sport my game.
00:02:59What was I going to do for the rest of my life? I thought, you know.
00:03:03This has been my obsession for all these years.
00:03:09The great news ran through the land.
00:03:11Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff, Birmingham, London.
00:03:14The end of the German war.
00:03:16Jilly Cooper was at home in Surrey.
00:03:21My mother was bashing up some wisteria.
00:03:23Because if you bash up stems, it lets the water in.
00:03:26And she was bashing up some stems from wisteria.
00:03:28And suddenly we heard on the wireless, the war was over.
00:03:33And my mother said, pinch me, pinch me, that I know I'm awake.
00:03:38And so I sort of gave her a little pinch.
00:03:41And then she said, burst into floods of tears.
00:03:45And she said, I said, what's the matter?
00:03:47I thought we must have lost the war or something.
00:03:49I was so worried.
00:03:50And she said, no, we've won, we've won.
00:03:52And she wiped her eyes, I remember, with her aprons.
00:03:54And we ran into the streets and everybody was cheering and yelling.
00:03:57It was heaven, absolute heaven.
00:04:02In the east end of London,
00:04:03Kenny Lynch was just finishing school for the day.
00:04:07My sister was waiting at the gate for me.
00:04:09And I come out and she said, it's over, it's over, the war's over.
00:04:15I came out of school and there were people cuddling at each other
00:04:18and jumping up and down.
00:04:19It was like they'd run a football match or something.
00:04:21It was that kind of sort of atmosphere going on.
00:04:25Obviously, the war ends, it's going to be fantastic, you know.
00:04:29Everybody's going to, you know,
00:04:30everybody started loving each other for a little while.
00:04:35Esther Ranson was in the garden of her family home in Hertfordshire.
00:04:40My grandmother was carrying around a radio, a battery radio.
00:04:46And she was carrying it around the garden.
00:04:49I can't imagine why I feel so emotional.
00:05:03But I think that what I remember was her joy.
00:05:10It was extraordinary.
00:05:12The wonderful news of peace.
00:05:13Germany's surrender took most people by surprise.
00:05:25So did the evening newsflash announcing that the next day would be a public holiday
00:05:29to celebrate victory in Europe.
00:05:31And sing this little song.
00:05:35David Attenborough was living with his parents in Leicestershire.
00:05:39My elder brother Richard was in the RAF as a rear gutter and a cameraman.
00:05:45I was waiting to go out to Cambridge and so I was in the home guard.
00:05:51I was in private, whatever his name is, in the home guard with the muffler.
00:05:56This was the British people's finest day, the end of the German war.
00:06:03I don't honestly remember suddenly crouching behind the radio and listening to it as we do in the documentaries.
00:06:11I can't recall that, but it was certain great jubilation.
00:06:19Yeah, and when it was declared to be May the 8th, that was great.
00:06:24And May the 8th was also my 19th birthday.
00:06:36For years people had been willing the war to end.
00:06:39Now suddenly it was over and they only had a matter of hours to prepare for the celebrations.
00:06:49Despite the building excitement of May the 7th, by the morning of the 8th, some people still hadn't heard the news.
00:06:59Anne Reid was staying with a family friend in a cottage on the North York Moors.
00:07:04This little cottage only had candlelight.
00:07:08It had a range, but it didn't have any electricity or anything.
00:07:11And in the morning my aunt had one cow, we used to call her Aunty, Aunty Hilda.
00:07:18She had one cow down in a field, so we used to walk down from the cottage down the hill.
00:07:23And I remember carrying the bucket up to the field where this one cow was going to be milked.
00:07:27And as we passed this little cottage on the left-hand side, where there was an old guy called Dick.
00:07:34And he was standing at the gate and he said,
00:07:39T'was our.
00:07:41And we said, well, the war's over. T'was our.
00:07:45It's a really broad Yorkshire.
00:07:48And that was how I heard about it.
00:07:51Prime Minister Winston Churchill was due to address the nation at 3pm.
00:08:00Until then the victory did not feel official.
00:08:03So much of the country spent the morning in a state of anticipation.
00:08:15Theatres and cinemas were open for business as usual.
00:08:18June Whitfield was performing in Lancashire.
00:08:25I think I was 19 and I was on tour with Appointment with Fear.
00:08:33And the star of the show was Dame Irene Vanbrugh on May the 8th.
00:08:40I wrote in my diary, which I've since lost, can't find anywhere.
00:08:47I wrote, war in Europe ended.
00:08:53Felt very depressed.
00:08:56Had lunch with Irene. Felt better.
00:09:00Why I was depressed, I have no idea.
00:09:05Maybe because I was far from home and would rather have been there or something.
00:09:10Or maybe because we were in Preston.
00:09:15Which wasn't too exciting.
00:09:17In Oxford, Miriam Margulies and her mother hit upon an unusual way to mark the day.
00:09:27Mummy said, today is victory day.
00:09:30We're going to give cups of tea and cake and sandwiches to the bus crews.
00:09:37Mummy would come with me to the middle of the road in front of our house and just stop the bus by holding up her hand.
00:09:49Mummy lifted me up to the cabin and then I passed the plate through to the driver.
00:09:57It was thrilling.
00:10:00And we didn't do it in mugs, it was cups and saucers.
00:10:04So it was quite refined.
00:10:05This was North Oxford, of course.
00:10:15By early afternoon, huge crowds were starting to converge on central London in advance of Churchill's address.
00:10:21Bruce Forsyth was performing in a theatre just off Trafalgar Square.
00:10:28I was working at a theatre in Whitehall.
00:10:32The Whitehall Theatre, which Phyllis Dixie was the top of the bill there.
00:10:39She was kind of like the Gypsy Rose Lee of Britain.
00:10:43And she had this rather nudie show, with lots of lovely girls in the show as well.
00:10:48And VE Day, I watched it up on the roof of the theatre.
00:10:53And you could see all the people milling around down there.
00:10:59You were getting this happiness coming up.
00:11:05Down in the crowd was actor Leslie Phillips.
00:11:08He'd recently been demobbed.
00:11:11I was with a particular friend I've had since I was a young lad.
00:11:16He was in the Navy.
00:11:19Called Bobby.
00:11:21Bobby Diersmund.
00:11:23And we trolled around.
00:11:27And ran into a lot of people that I knew before I joined the Army.
00:11:35They used to grab me and kiss me and say,
00:11:39Oh, you got through?
00:11:40And I said, yes, I was one of the lucky ones.
00:11:46And I've always felt like that.
00:11:49Slightly guilty that I was a lucky one.
00:11:54We shall fight on the beaches.
00:12:04We shall fight on the landing grounds.
00:12:06We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.
00:12:10We shall fight in the hills.
00:12:12We shall never surrender.
00:12:14Winston Churchill had understood the importance of boosting public morale
00:12:20through the worst days of the German attacks on Britain.
00:12:23You ask, what is our aim?
00:12:26I can answer in one word.
00:12:28Victory.
00:12:30Victory at all costs.
00:12:32Victory in spite of all terror.
00:12:35Victory however long and hard the road may be.
00:12:37For without victory there is no survival.
00:12:46Churchill was a powerful leader.
00:12:53You can't exaggerate how intimately you felt you knew him.
00:12:57I mean, you were there right behind him.
00:13:01You felt that you were on the side of right against wrong.
00:13:04And that we'd come through.
00:13:07And we had come through.
00:13:11Now, on VE day, as 3pm approached,
00:13:15the enormous crowd massed in the centre of London
00:13:18to hear their hero speak.
00:13:23They stood in silence as the broadcast was relayed through the streets.
00:13:26Yesterday morning, at 2.41am, the German High Command signed the act of unconditional surrender.
00:13:40The German war is therefore at an end.
00:13:46We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing.
00:13:53Today is Victory in Europe Day.
00:13:59You listen to Mr. Churchill on the wireless, and he was so wonderful.
00:14:05That wonderful voice ringing out.
00:14:07Advance Britannia.
00:14:10Long live the cause of freedom.
00:14:14God save the King.
00:14:15We were so proud of him, and so proud of us, really, because we'd won the war.
00:14:25With the news of Victory now official, from Aberdeen and Edinburgh to Belfast, Liverpool and Cardiff, street parties got underway across Britain.
00:14:40Oh, the factories may be roaring.
00:14:45With the boom-a-lacka boom-a-lacka boom-a-lacka boom-a-lacka boom.
00:14:47I remember bunting going up.
00:14:49I can visualise the tables, and I remember one thing that struck me at the time.
00:14:53Whenever there was a funeral in the community, there was one lady in our street who was always called upon to a fish here.
00:15:00called upon to officiate because she had the biggest teapot in the village it was a huge teapot
00:15:06so she could accommodate sort of 20 people out of the teapot so she was always
00:15:10higher and i know this damn teapot standing in the middle of this this white table when it came
00:15:15an hour late she said you'll have to wait but everything's up for me i took two people to lift
00:15:22it up it was pouring i don't know why that stuck in my mind i just don't know but it did
00:15:26so that was i always think of teapots when i think of a bee day
00:15:36patrick stewart was also celebrating in yorkshire
00:15:42in the family archive there is quite a large photograph taken at the bottom of my street
00:15:50and there's food and there are mugs or glasses clearly there's been some sort of feast um the
00:16:00what kind of feast in 1945 i really can't imagine but we look festive and we look happy i think for
00:16:09all of us it must have been a thrilling and fun experience
00:16:18the men that were in the photograph were all old so they were not at war
00:16:25and most combatants would still have been in the services would not have yet been de-mobbed
00:16:31at the time of ve day who do you think you are kidding mr hitler during the war 1.7 million men
00:16:42mostly too old or too young for active service had joined the home guard this film shows a training
00:16:49exercise of the first holland battalion in lincolnshire
00:17:04david attenborough was a member of his local battalion in leicester
00:17:09part of the celebrations for may the 8th was that the home guard which i was a proud member having um
00:17:16dealt with hitler as it were put on a parade and um we we swarmed up and down ropes that we put over
00:17:23the front of the of the university buildings if you think we're on the run
00:17:32what that represented i can't recall but anyway that's what we did
00:17:46it's a happy happy day
00:17:53200 miles away in gateshead the residents of fleming street were also celebrating
00:18:02this rare color footage was shot by an off-duty policeman
00:18:14in leeds john craven was enjoying the party
00:18:31i was about four and a half i think when the war ended
00:18:34well when it ended in europe but i was living with my mum and two or three maiden aunts and my granny
00:18:44and i was spoiled to death because my dad was a prisoner of war with the japanese
00:18:51and had been for over three years and during that time my mum didn't really know whether he was alive or
00:18:58dead i was told he was in the jungles and i thought he was you know an adventurer
00:19:04and he was fighting tigers and things like that uh when in fact he was having a hell of a time
00:19:10as a prisoner of war john's father had been forced to work on the so-called death railway building the
00:19:16bridge over the river quai
00:19:18so i was a bit confused because everybody was celebrating the end of the war but it was the
00:19:25end of the war in europe so i we all joined in the celebration but it was tinged with well i suppose from
00:19:34my mother's point of view a great uh worry
00:19:52back in london the celebrations were in full swing
00:20:02almost right up to the end london and southern england had been under five
00:20:06london certainly had as much right as anywhere to celebrate victory and london certainly did
00:20:24huge crowds swarmed towards buckingham palace hoping for an appearance by the royal family
00:20:29naturally approaches to buckingham palace were almost continually jow
00:20:48at last the king queen and the young princesses came out onto the balcony
00:20:59the king and queen they thought they took their duty and responsibility very very seriously they
00:21:13thought that it had been a conscious decision for the royal family to stay not just in england but in
00:21:19london after all my family had moved out they'd moved into hertfordshire but the royal family
00:21:26had steadfastly stayed knowing that buckingham palace would be a target for bombs as indeed it was
00:21:33oh i think we thought they were wonderful
00:21:50what was that lovely thing about the queen i mean when did she get bombed and said you know
00:21:54she could now look the east end in the face again all britain was united in the celebrations
00:22:13as these scenes shot by local filmmakers from across the country show
00:22:31for the victory generation this was the first day of a new life
00:22:36many children had little or no memory of a time before the war
00:22:39now their futures would be forged in peace
00:22:52the royal standard waves above for everyone to see
00:22:56the king is with his people cause that's where he wants to be
00:23:01that night in a triumphant gesture thousands of bonfires were built across the country ending six
00:23:11years of strict blackout
00:23:15johnny ball was living just outside bristol
00:23:18our road was a sort of a thoroughfare with a grass version on each side so there was width
00:23:24and there was an entrance to a quarry and that's where we built the bonfire just off the road
00:23:29and it was enormous there was an effigy of of hitler
00:23:42a piano appeared on a lawn propped up because the lawn sloped like they there were gramophones and
00:23:48music and it was just this wonderful uh cacophony of noise
00:23:52i never cared much for moonlit skies
00:23:57you could see the next bonfire in fact i remember i think we went up to the next bonfire
00:24:02and then back to ours no house is better and uh but but there was all that toing and froing
00:24:09and all the troops both british but especially americans were so overjoyed by it and the americans
00:24:15you could get hold of boots so they did bonfire crawl all night and people were coming either up
00:24:21or down the road all night and it was just fantastic and i remember kicking over the embers
00:24:27at four o'clock in the morning and i was not yet seven
00:24:35the night could go on forever for everybody it could have gone on forever it was wonderful
00:24:38on the north york moors anne reed was taken to the victory party by an older friend everybody went
00:24:47out and sang and danced around the bonfire and there was a marquee where we all went in and
00:24:56did very old-fashioned dances yeah
00:25:00i remember my brother had sent me colin had sent me a beautiful pair of golden slippers um with little
00:25:13heels and uh from new york and i was i remember what i was wearing in a little blue dress and uh we
00:25:22danced and um of course it was muddy the floor was they didn't have anything down on them that's mad
00:25:31rainy days don't worry me there's a rainbow that in surrey jilly cooper and her family were going
00:25:40to celebrate with neighbors we were invited to a party by a lady thornley who lived up the road
00:25:49old lady thornley was divine um she once there was a bomb on her house and she came out um with
00:25:56completely black hair from the soot and her husband said my dear you look 20 years younger
00:26:03and it was lovely and it was everybody dressed up my mother looked most much most beautiful in a
00:26:08lovely green dress but people had actually made long skirts out of black curtains and suddenly the
00:26:12blackout had gone you know that was so wonderful it was light let them be light and um it was everybody
00:26:17got very and there was a huge bomb fire with a replica of hitler and baked potatoes in the um um fire
00:26:23there was a lot of singing there will always been england that that was when we all sang and
00:26:41everybody all the grown-ups cry it was so exciting i don't think anything anything ever could be quite
00:26:46so exciting again um and because we were free
00:26:56back in london the crowds were going wild
00:27:00well we overlooked it all and saw it on mass and then we went downstairs we joined into into all the
00:27:18frivolity
00:27:19we got amongst all the people and all the music going on and it was it was chaos but lovely chaos
00:27:35seeing the joy and the happiness in everybody's face you know
00:27:39the soldiers themselves and air force and naval people
00:27:50but then the women that the the the to think that their their men were coming home after these
00:27:57terrible six years six years of war you know
00:28:00it sort of had a a relief this was the feeling relief from everything
00:28:22leslie phillips was still in the crowd
00:28:24everybody had gone absolutely bloody mad they were crazy they were doing all sorts of naughty things
00:28:43well i was kissed by a number of women even a few men as well
00:28:49going up and hugging people you've never seen before in your life why should i go over and
00:28:59hug that guy over there he's not very he's not very good looking
00:29:04even by the women because i hugged the women
00:29:09i think there were a few people who were very pissed
00:29:12well most people would have a bottle of whatever they fancy bottles of beer bottles of scotch bottles
00:29:22of gin and whoever came towards you there would you like a bottle of this one and what is it oh no
00:29:28i don't i don't want any more of that and people would just exchange drinks
00:29:37there was a party around every corner
00:29:42you were just dragged in you know
00:29:49people who were just bonkers
00:29:54i'm sure there were a lot of marriages after that
00:29:59a lot of people were so fell in love with each other
00:30:0617-year-old cleo lane was in southall west london
00:30:10i was with my family all of them and what else would our family be doing
00:30:17during such a joyful time and that would be making music
00:30:26we sang we sang quite a lot when i think about it we sang quite a lot we danced quite a lot this
00:30:33mainly mainly in the streets
00:30:42my father who who loved to sing would sing at the drop of a hat
00:30:48and we all sang and enjoyed ourselves immensely
00:30:51people were loving life again
00:31:05back in central london searchlights so recently needed to hunt enemy aircraft were used to light up the
00:31:11great buildings for the lights to be on it was wonderful
00:31:21and there was a song i'm gonna get lit up when the lights go on in london wonderful wonderful song
00:31:30i'm gonna get lit up as i've never been before
00:31:48you will find me on the time
00:31:51honor blackman was a volunteer dispatch rider during the war
00:31:56an awful lot of people went quite mad
00:32:00i don't know why i wasn't rushing around kissing soldiers and things but i wasn't
00:32:06i was rather shy then um no but it was a wonderful feeling all round and of course you all thought it
00:32:14was going to be wonderful after that and it wasn't of course in as much as the bombing stopped the war
00:32:22had stopped but rationing went on and life is still very tough
00:32:35and the world is
00:32:59following ve day the hundreds of thousands of british servicemen who were stationed overseas
00:33:04started to return home
00:33:26of course there were lots of celebrations when people came home
00:33:29i remember my uncle jim and my dad going out and getting absolutely plastered
00:33:46my mother came down and found him wrapped in the kitchen carpet on the rug on the city
00:33:52they wouldn't like me telling you that there's a land on
00:34:00after long years of uncertainty john craven's family received news that his father was alive
00:34:06and was on his way home
00:34:10i was taken by my mum and other relatives to leeds city station to to uh to meet the train with my dad
00:34:17on it and i got no idea what he looked like i mean i i had um a couple of photographs you know from
00:34:24before he went away but he looked nothing like that when he came back he was skin and bone
00:34:31and somehow he managed to lift me onto his shoulders i remember this this is the first thing i remember
00:34:37about my dad that he lifted me up and put him put me on his shoulders and carried me out of the station
00:34:42although he he you know he was weak and weighed next to nothing to what i was remember being a huge
00:34:50car to take us home it's a very small taxi apparently um but that was a joyous moment for me
00:34:56and my dad many years later uh wrote a little article about his experiences of coming home
00:35:10and um in it he said how overjoyed he was that i hadn't rejected him because apparently a lot of
00:35:19returning soldiers sailors and airmen who hadn't seen their children for a long long time
00:35:26the children rejected them but dad was absolutely uh over the moon that um you know i i was i ran up to
00:35:33him and he picked me up and put me on his shoulders and uh films of the day show the joyous reunions
00:35:51but for many families the return of servicemen caused emotional upheaval
00:36:02the war ended and my father came home he smelled so fresh and clean and manly he looked impressive
00:36:14he wore brown leather gloves and he had a little leather swagger stick that he carried that i was
00:36:20allowed to hold but one of the problems was that my brother and i had been living a very
00:36:27very contented very domestic very affectionate loving life with my mother i think i slept in my mother's bed
00:36:34for the first four years of my life and then there was a big man in the house my father was once again
00:36:43part of our family and everything changed
00:36:46from seven o'clock in the morning to nine o'clock at night on july the fifth the people of britain
00:36:58decided on the kind of government they want it was the first general election for 10 years and experts
00:37:04that's early estimated just two months after vee day the nation went to the polls
00:37:13the war had changed britain there was a growing desire to create a fairer more equal society
00:37:21the labor government is the only one which will get you a house despite the desire for change few
00:37:28believe that labor's clement attley could defeat winston churchill
00:37:36labor landslide newspapers carried the astonishing news to an amazed public
00:37:42well let's face it whoever imagined such a result
00:37:47he's a great man and i thought how extraordinary he'd won the war for us
00:37:55and as soon as he'd done it they kicked him out i never understood that
00:38:02there will be universal regret that the gifts of so brilliant a statesman will be forfeited by this
00:38:07election poor mr churchill after all he'd done and they dumped him my father i remember being
00:38:14absolutely sort of incandescent as they would say now with rage seemed awful
00:38:19but the overwhelming result showed that most people did want the social reform that atley's labor
00:38:26party had promised my parents wouldn't vote winston churchill in again because they said he's good in
00:38:33war no we want people good in peace and that's why the swing went very much to the left in politics
00:38:40because they wanted people thinking of the people for the people
00:38:48the course of the next few years may well decide the future of civilization for decades or for centuries
00:39:02over the next six years the new government would nationalize industries establish the welfare state
00:39:07and create the national health service this leaflet is coming through your letterbox one day soon
00:39:14or maybe you have already had your copy read it carefully it also continued with education reforms
00:39:21providing free secondary schools for all children and raising the school leaving age to 15.
00:39:27do i take it that you're all in favor of remaining at school another year
00:39:36we were lucky our generation because the education act i mean that changed everybody's life particularly
00:39:42kids like me who had no hope of going to onto further education or grammar school because they couldn't afford it
00:39:51it's only when you look back on those years you think god i mean what a change came about you
00:39:56how different it was blue skies around the corner at the outset the task of building this new britain
00:40:07was immense four million homes were damaged during the war and half a million totally destroyed
00:40:16east end kid may dream of the oval or old trappard but his playground is all too often the place where the
00:40:22bomb got
00:40:26i do remember bomb sites and they were really good fun
00:40:29i do remember bomb sites and they were really good fun
00:40:37you could scramble all over them and build things and towers and have gangs
00:40:55lots of hiding and lots of throwing bricks and um lots of with guns
00:41:11yes it was like what's what do they call that is it thought thought park it's like one
00:41:16of those the equivalent i suppose just as exciting
00:41:34extraordinary sites you'd see the interior of houses exposed because all the walls had gone and
00:41:43the one remaining wall had the furniture sometimes still clinging to it
00:41:50and they were like roman ruins london's ludgate gardens illustrate a new and enterprising use of
00:41:56bomb sites and a new way of improving your tennis london's first target tennis court
00:42:01when i came out of university 46 47 i got a job in the publishing house that was just by st paul's
00:42:13and the manager was very keen gardener and so he mobilized the staff and we all pitched in and turned
00:42:21the bomb sites into gardens little things mean a lot we loved it but it was also symbolic really that
00:42:31here were the bombs and you were determined that the destruction was over and this was the time for
00:42:36creation little things mean a lot it was a very good garden actually
00:42:43the war was over but britain was broke and there was a shortage of food the government continued
00:42:59wartime rationing everyone got a limited but equal share
00:43:03after the jubilation and you know all the excitement things didn't really change that much rationing
00:43:17was still in full force you all hoped maybe that that things will be back to normal when when it was
00:43:25all over well we did win but it didn't feel like it it's cure for everything in fact it's far worse now
00:43:36than it was during the war the british people were already fed up with rationing but then things got
00:43:45even worse the rations were cut if she doesn't get the things that she wants she will give him
00:43:52mine plenty trouble well we heard a shortage of butter shortage of bacon a shortage of everything
00:44:03we've got to go short toast and dry day breakfast aren't much to shout about but now even they're going
00:44:10living when you know you're not going to have any butter on your bread for the last two days of the
00:44:15week or three days of the week if you were a heavy spreader you know i'm quite a heavy spreader so
00:44:22that was that was awful to contend with i get up wondering what i'm going to give the boys to eat
00:44:29i remember my mother keeping on saying things like look children what how fortunate we are boys we've
00:44:35got tripe you know look at those lovely nutty bits and those interesting little bit of sort of
00:44:40like things look like fur isn't that interesting you'll love that um and uh yes that was pretty
00:44:49grisly every man woman and child in britain had a ration book with coupons that were crossed off when
00:44:59they bought ration foods i remember the ration book which was like compressed paper had little whiskers in
00:45:07it and everything inside it had all these different coupons and they were only about that thing and
00:45:12they were about the same size as a passport your ration book in those days was like your passport when
00:45:23you go away on holiday well you where's my passport and it was the same thing with the ration book if
00:45:30if you lost your ration book there was no other way that you could eat
00:45:35you'd guard your ration book with your life
00:45:42the ration book without doubt was the most important document in our family because once
00:45:48i was sent to the co-op with the ration book and i lost it on the way when i came back i didn't have
00:45:56we found it it i'd left it behind in the co-op but to come home and say i hadn't got it
00:46:02it was a unimaginably bad thing here's the ration for one book being read it two pennyworth of corn
00:46:14beef and ten pennyworth of steak and there's your rations spread out in all its glory that's your
00:46:20ration for the way there's no more that's the same that's the lot what you like that's
00:46:27mr warner what do you think of this new meat rationing oh i think it's terrible
00:46:31i knew there was a magic land called before the war because i knew that there were amazing things
00:46:46that people at in those days they could have meringues with cream and any amount of eggs any amount of
00:46:56meat any amount of butter and they didn't have to have rosehip syrup well as everyone knows the
00:47:04question of dried eggs was the straw that almost broke the housewife's back powdered egg how do you
00:47:09powder an egg i remember powdered egg it's very easy to serve you should empty the packet at the
00:47:18end of the table and then you get a card and waft it down the table not only have our rations been
00:47:24reduced but many of the substitutes we came to know in wartime are disappearing from our shelves
00:47:30i know i ate spam yes it's amazing you look back at what your staple diet was so much so that
00:47:40you have difficulty remembering it because it was never a matter of conversation people
00:47:44didn't ring up so i had a wonderful salad last night oh come on we're too busy smoking
00:47:55children had their own shortages to put up with
00:48:00you touch my fingertips and my heart is a glove
00:48:09sweet rationing was appalling you'll want your personal ration book now if you want to buy sweets
00:48:14it was two bars of chocolate or something a month and so my brother and i used to wait till sunday
00:48:20when the rationing started again and one shop stayed open on sunday and rushed down and by the blew the
00:48:25whole lot of one day then we have to wait for a month to get to get more from this week the sweet
00:48:30ration is three quarters of a pound per four weeks but don't ask for three ounces please when they're
00:48:37seven-pence-havenny a quarter for a penny you could buy 12 wafers and we used to toast those and that's all
00:48:45we got you don't realize that we suffered sweets didn't become freely available again until 1953
00:48:55i do remember of course when sweet rationing sugar came off the ration it was a moment of high
00:49:09high drama at the high school because just down the road from the high school in banbury road was our
00:49:16tuck shop and we rushed there and gorged it was unseen
00:49:22as zero hour approaches the dawn patrol gathers outside the confectioners money boxes are rifled
00:49:29and even father joins the queue must have been frightening for the people serving actually
00:49:34the longest memories find it hard it was just unbridled lust from a lot of noisy schoolgirls
00:49:42jostling and shouting and pushing the sherbet lemons into their satchels
00:49:52a few moments nostalgia over that almost forgotten fruit remember bananas those long yellow things
00:50:01with slippery skins during the 1940s newsreels seemed to delight in showing people the things they
00:50:07couldn't have oh yes we have no bananas we have no bananas never saw a banana all the way through the
00:50:19war bananas just weren't available and there were wax bananas on display in the green grocers to remind us
00:50:30what they were like and i used to crave for those
00:50:35you know comics would say we haven't seen a banana in six years
00:50:42when the first bananas returned to britain in december 1945 it was a national event
00:50:47legendary posters now the bananas are here in person and at avonmouth docks they're welcomed by bristol's lord mayor
00:50:56certainly it was terribly thrilling when one got to see a banana
00:51:03it was the oddest thing that suddenly you went into the shop and you could buy a banana
00:51:11beautiful wonderful thing you couldn't get near the store
00:51:14that adam there was one store and adam all lit up with the search lights and they know you know
00:51:18on the store and people were like queuing up to go to walk past the store and see him
00:51:24i apparently tried to eat a banana with the skin on the first banana i ever saw
00:51:31beryl collins was the first child to get her teeth into the cargo all of which is reserved for under 18.
00:51:36my mum came running out of the green grocers and she put it through the window of the car and gave
00:51:42it to me and i didn't know how to eat it i didn't know you go like that and so i opened it like that
00:51:48she had no doubt eaten bananas before but there were others who hadn't and the captain of the ship
00:51:52had to explain how to peel these strange fruit even then some of the kids didn't seem to know how to eat
00:51:57them and i've always had a regret that i didn't have that wonderful first banana eaten the proper way the way
00:52:05monkeys do it it was nice it wasn't all that amazing but it was nice but bananas weren't a sign that
00:52:15things were generally getting better
00:52:20in the post-war years clothes were still rationed too people were instructed to make do and mend
00:52:26love somebody here is mrs quilty on her way to the bathroom she's wearing a patchwork dressing gown
00:52:36made of odd pieces of material the lining was formerly a dust sheet nothing was thrown away everything
00:52:42was mended and i remember i was always in hand-me-downs i did want my own dress though my own coat not
00:52:52something i'd seen my sister wearing for years you know until it was too skimpy on her then i got oh
00:52:59it's coming my way love somebody but i won't say it was quite difficult to make yourself look decent
00:53:09thank goodness my brother's wife was so wonderful at making clothes
00:53:14so that's how i got dressed for the stage she made my clothes
00:53:24let me say at once that we don't know whether any of these nylon stockings will be in britain
00:53:28by christmas or not even if they are we're prepared to bet there won't be anything like enough to go around
00:53:33when my mother couldn't get stockings they used to get a makeup that they'd put on or even gravy
00:53:45browning they'd rub on their legs and then she'd draw a line at the back i remember going like that and
00:53:52drawing the line on the back of her leg because they always had seams
00:53:56they were almost like black market want some nylons a lot of that went on i mean can you imagine not
00:54:06drugs nylons
00:54:19the radio was very important it was a fever at the while it was wonderful i love the radio
00:54:25dick barton especially and snowy and jock they just did terribly exciting things through and it
00:54:30was every i think it was every night dick barton with an old wartime colleague snowy white
00:54:35is on holiday at grandly a small village on the devonshire coast
00:54:40there was always ended with some perilous thing i shan't be long
00:54:48rush back to find out what happened has bilhelm crammer set this trap will he get the vital
00:54:54papers can he work the secret weapon cliffhanger every night
00:55:01i never listened to dick barton he wasn't my style
00:55:05i certainly remember there was a program called paul temple
00:55:10paul temple i sort of loved paul temple paul temple
00:55:15paul temple and his wife steve were britain's other great radio detectives
00:55:19paul i've been thinking about this desmond case i don't want to talk about the desmond case
00:55:25i remember that we'd all sit around going
00:55:27oh god this is sort of it's a mouthing what paul temple would have been doing or steve his wife
00:55:40how she was reacting she was on the train only only one see what happened because it was the end of the war they were all basically else about spies
00:55:55i was always nervous then going up to bed so my sister had to come up with me
00:56:01because i was scared that there'd be something like this had happened in paul temple
00:56:08the man in black valentine dials the man in black at 11 o'clock at night
00:56:14this is your storyteller the man in black
00:56:19i used to sit at the top of the stairs and listen to them and they were horrendously scary
00:56:23an appointment with fear
00:56:31and when we got around the corner of course my sister did like this so i was scared anyway
00:56:44outside and in cold was an unforgettable feature of those post-war years the victory
00:56:50generation grew up in a much chillier world our house was always cold always cold and with the
00:56:59cold i mean it was just something you put up with because everybody unless you were very wealthy were
00:57:04in the same situation there was no central heating it was absolutely freezing and when i got up in the
00:57:12morning you know you could see your breath in the air we only had one fire in our house
00:57:19and all the other heating was by paraffin stoves so there was a constant smell of paraffin throughout
00:57:25the house fuel is short must be economized so take double care with frost precautions
00:57:32i remember ice on the inside of the window in my bedroom i remember getting as close as i could
00:57:38to the little gas fire it was bitter bitter bitter bitter
00:57:42drafts are the chief danger drafts through unfelted roofs from that window close it
00:57:50from under the door a mat or rye will stop that
00:57:55but not everyone suffered to quite the same extent
00:57:58we were never cold you know in the mining community the one thing we had was plenty of
00:58:04coal not really i mean our houses kept a constant temperature about 46 degrees
00:58:09i'm very sure you i mean our windows never got steamed up anything like that
00:58:14no no no no the one thing we were never going to die up there was cold no matter how bad it was outside
00:58:22in 1947 britain was hit by the worst weather for 50 years the country was brought to a standstill
00:58:30but for children it was a winter they'd never forget that appalling winter of 47 was nothing but an
00:58:39adventure for me i remember vividly climbing over piles of snow to get to school and the other memory
00:58:48was sledging there was a field that had quite a nice slope on it close to us and my father had made
00:58:55me a sledge a very rough simple thing but went like a rocket
00:59:03the hours that we spent until dark
00:59:08and hearing my mother's voice from the doorstep calling me home and pulling my sledge after me
00:59:14back up and propping it up against the wall outside and not able to sleep with excitement at
00:59:19the thought of the next day we go and do it all again
00:59:22the snow built up so deeply that we actually had an igloo outside our house
00:59:36it was about four or five feet tall and we actually sat in this igloo and and had our own little
00:59:44eskimo experience
00:59:56britain was gradually adjusting to peace
01:00:00but for the victory generation the shadow of war was never far away
01:00:05i thought of something the other day that it's the only time i really realized the horror of war
01:00:23i was coming back from victoria i think going down the escalator in the tube and there were two airmen
01:00:30one on the escalator in air force uniform one had lost a leg one had lost an arm and they were both
01:00:43they'd both been so burnt and they were smoking cigarettes and you didn't know
01:00:50where their mouth was it was just frightening
01:00:53and when i got down to the platform we found that one lot of people was over here and the other lot
01:01:01was here and these two men were isolated in the middle and it was so terrible that they'd suffered this
01:01:11defending us
01:01:12and i got back to ealing on the train and then caught a bus and then i i i broke up totally and my father
01:01:23thought i'd been raped because i couldn't stop sobbing because it was such a a horror
01:01:30and then you weren't really understood war you know
01:01:47one of the most gifted uh rugby players in the college um team for which i played
01:01:53uh a man called lyle scott um brilliant um he had he had a marvelous jink i mean he was he went like
01:02:03quicksilver and fast but he couldn't play because he had had he'd lost one hand
01:02:10you know uh i mean when i say he couldn't play he couldn't play for the university because he hadn't
01:02:15got one hand he played for he paid for the came for the college with one hand and was brilliant
01:02:20um and it was that sort of thing that made you realize you know how lucky you were just by hairspray
01:02:30you know
01:02:37my father came back from the war very very successful
01:02:41he left military service in 1945 as a superstar
01:02:46what happened afterwards was what was important and sad my father could only get basically laboring
01:02:59work and after five years of living an organized um regimented life uh now there were
01:03:10three children and uh a tiny tiny house all of us living in basically in one room it must have been
01:03:19very hard for him and he became a weekend alcoholic he became violent in the house
01:03:26patrick has only recently discovered that his father was suffering the effects of shell shock
01:03:31the severe shell shock coupled with his fall in status from military to civilian life must have been
01:03:45very challenging and without excusing his behavior at all nevertheless it was a challenge that
01:03:53he had no help to meet in the years directly after the war many jewish refugees survivors of the holocaust
01:04:05left mainland europe some came to britain
01:04:11because my father was a doctor and because he spoke yiddish
01:04:15all the refugees from europe who came to reside eventually in oxford sought him out because they
01:04:26spoke yiddish so through that i met a lot of his patients who were refugees and i knew the words
01:04:36concentration camp and i knew that they had a number and they would show me the number sort of blue dark blue
01:04:45on that was burned into their skin i don't think i really understood the horrors of it then
01:04:53but i certainly knew that it was true and i often think to myself if i'd been born a hundred miles to
01:05:01the east i wouldn't be here now many of the victory generation were bearing the pain of personal loss
01:05:10my brother was a flight sergeant in the raf he loved anything mechanical this is why he helped my father
01:05:23in his garage business my father would never let me down obviously i was the clean boy the one who was
01:05:29going to go on the stage and had to have clean hands and uh so john sort of had his initial training
01:05:35in 1943 when bruce's brother john was 20 the plane he was flying crashed into the sea
01:05:47my brother was posted as missing it wasn't you know killed in action or anything like that it was
01:05:53missing my mother always thought that for years afterwards that he could have been picked up by some
01:06:00boat or other and somehow finished up in south america she never really accepted the fact that he had
01:06:07been killed 326 000 british servicemen died in the war all their families were living with grief
01:06:17it's always a terrible thing to accept that someone is gone all of a sudden they're just not there you know
01:06:28it was heartbreaking heartbreaking
01:06:38one of the few treats of post-war life was the chance to go on holiday
01:06:42the blackpool week must have been the very first holiday that i ever took it was the first time i'd seen
01:06:52the ocean a huge contrast to the war years being at the seaside with the sun shining occasionally digging
01:07:03in sand and and eating candy floss the ritual was you had candy floss you had to have a candy floss and
01:07:14my dad always had to have first bite and then it was all night
01:07:20to be allowed to go into an amusement arcade and put pennies down the slot and thing
01:07:24after the war we went to cluckton butlins
01:07:34butlins was like the place to go for a holiday
01:07:38and we had a wonderful time with that we went there for a week
01:07:43butlins holidays with their special camps and organized fun were hugely popular
01:07:48i remember my father going in for the gurning competition which he took his false teeth out
01:07:57because everybody had false teeth and he pulled these extraordinary faces and he won which i was
01:08:03disappointed that i thought he was too handsome to win we were gathering stars while a million guitars
01:08:10played our love we went in for song competitions and everything was so organized and sweet and good fun
01:08:20no it was after the war so people were determined to have a good time whether the weather was bad or not
01:08:29my father was a sporting nut i mean he played every sport uh someone quite well and he loved buttons
01:08:36because he could win all the competitions there he was very competitive man so one i remember he won
01:08:41the tennis and he couldn't play tennis he won the three-legged race you know there i guess but i
01:08:46mean you know he took a moment with ludicrous trophies
01:08:54those memories remain for me the most exotic memories of my life until for me fortunately as the years went by
01:09:03other exotic locations and experiences rather overwhelmed blackpool central pier
01:09:17back in the real world britain was facing the challenge of rebuilding help was needed people
01:09:23from across the commonwealth had fought for britain during the war
01:09:26now to aid the regeneration the government made british citizenship available to all commonwealth
01:09:34subjects arrivals at tilbury the empire windrush brings to britain 500 jamaicans from 1948 they began
01:09:44to arrive their spokesman sings his thanks to britain now may i ask you your name lord kitchener lord
01:09:51kitchener now i'm told that you are really the king of calypso singers is that right yes that's
01:09:55what you sing for us right now yes london is the place for me london this lovely i knew lord
01:10:05kitchener very well because we worked in a club funny enough in manchester called the continental
01:10:11and i i was there for a couple of years to london city he probably made that that song up in the
01:10:19spur of the moment because that's how good he was he was just incredible how did he do that i used to
01:10:26feel very inadequate when he was on stage and all that but this is the place i wanted to know darling
01:10:36i remember the people coming in from the west indies oh yeah yeah i had plenty of nice new boyfriends
01:10:44at last well believe me i am speaking broad-minded and it was wonderful because it was a change of
01:10:52style and a nice style because it was a new musical style which i liked
01:10:59the newcomers arrived into britain's bleak world of rationing and shortages
01:11:06but there were ways of getting away from the gloom
01:11:14films are the great escape you know when you're a kid in leeds the cinema took you all over the world
01:11:27people had all sorts of amazing adventures on the screen
01:11:33i grew up in a movie house basically it was called the rock cinema
01:11:37and from the age of about four
01:11:40onwards i went regularly with my parents and when i was old enough i went every night
01:11:44and so every movie ever was made
01:11:46i wanted to marry esther williams
01:12:05lauren mccall too i fell madly in love with it's even better when you help
01:12:09the american cinema it was a very very potent thing in those days
01:12:13i'm sure you won't change your mind particularly if you contrast it to the life we were leading
01:12:19you know this we're all this of black and white life that we're all no glamour at all and then you
01:12:24saw this extraordinary images of these images produced by hollover at that time
01:12:29as a child one admired everything american in the films the woman would always come back with a paper
01:12:41bag full of food and things like that and then she'd kick the fridge door shut with her foot and then
01:12:48she'd get a donut and put it in her mouth and walk around the kitchen like this and there were certain
01:12:53ways and their white teeth and thick shiny shiny hair imagine me with my head on your soul i remember
01:13:04writing to rita hayworth when i saw cover girl for a picture of her and um i got the picture back
01:13:13and i saw written on the back beverly hills california and i think that's what i framed
01:13:20was the envelope because i thought there's a real place called beverly hills california
01:13:28america seemed like the land of plenty or the land of style which we didn't have yet
01:13:37but as the 1940s turned into the 1950s signs of renewal were finally appearing in britain
01:13:43the feeling was of of of just new windows being opened um and and you were traveling you were
01:13:56thinking new things there were new possibilities that totally changed the mindset in the summer of 1951
01:14:05people had a glimpse of an exciting new world when the south bank in london became the center of a
01:14:10magical cultural celebration the festival of britain the festival hall was a marvelous hall i still
01:14:18think it's a marvelous hall and i would i've got the program still somewhere of of going to that first
01:14:25week of celebratory concerts um i didn't get into the first one but i got into one of them
01:14:31and then i remember what they played they paid beethoven a german composer and it sounded marvelous
01:14:41eight million people visited the festival it made the promise of v day seem real
01:14:47i do remember the skylon which was this long pointed piece of shining steel suspended on wires in fact
01:14:58so brilliantly done but it didn't look as though it was suspended on anything i mean what an imaginative
01:15:05thing to do it didn't mean a damn thing i mean this great cigar shaped thing standing vertically on the
01:15:10south back we thought it was terrific absolutely true its shape and its design was so redolent of um
01:15:22everything that was to come and nothing that we had yet experienced
01:15:32when i was in secondary school we all went on the train to the festival of britain all in our gabardine max
01:15:38as we had in those days and the festival was fantastic and i remember this dome of discovery
01:15:44here beneath the dome of discovery vast as a city square appears the story of the great researchers
01:15:54it was very very popular everybody i knew had been you know even the skint merchants they'd been there
01:16:00as well it's got there somehow
01:16:02it's impact on morale was immense because it proved that there was a future and things were going to get
01:16:15better
01:16:29the most obvious sign of change was the end of rationing tea came off ration in 1952
01:16:35sugar in 1953 and finally meat in 1954 this went hand in hand with the beginnings of a new consumer boom
01:16:45the victory generation now had their sights set firmly on the future
01:16:54good evening we're going to spend a large part of panorama tonight looking at television and that future
01:17:02was going to be hugely influenced by an invention that was just starting to make its mark
01:17:10sort of miracle it was life i mean the fact that you were seeing something happening now in front
01:17:14of you it was incredible the cinema wasn't like a cinema was obviously the past wasn't it but this was
01:17:19now it's extraordinary
01:17:21one family had a television set in my street a little tiny screen like this black and white television
01:17:32set and they would invite me and my mother as well on a saturday night to their house to watch television
01:17:40and at seven o'clock the screen would go white and then there would be a picture and i think what we
01:17:47watched immediately was what's my line are you employed by a public authority a panel quiz show
01:17:58it was magical it was absolutely brilliant and beautiful it was so exciting to have all this jolliness
01:18:05in your front room something so to look forward to and i remember for myself there was ballet for
01:18:12beginners which was i suppose the equivalent of strictly now i loved that then there was handwriting
01:18:19lessons so i learned how to have nice handwriting and it was extraordinary
01:18:29i do remember that at 10 o'clock at night they said good night everyone good night thanks for watching
01:18:36or something and the screen would go black so we had i think approximately three hours of television
01:18:44the picture quality was dreadful but it didn't matter you know there was a miracle that that somehow
01:18:52there were pictures going through the air around you fantastic
01:18:56in 1955 britain got choice the bbc was joined by itv
01:19:09it must have been much later that i watched variety programs particularly sunday night at the london
01:19:16palladium i got the job at the palladium and that was an incredible job you know in television
01:19:42because there were only two channels that's all when you think of all the channels we have now we
01:19:47had itv and bbc and i worked for itv doing sunday night the palladium which was the biggest show of
01:19:54the week the biggest stars from america came on to be on sunday night the palladium i know you're
01:19:59going to really love mac the knife himself bobby darren thank you swing low sweet chariot i'd been
01:20:22performing all the time i've been in dreadful shows i've had all that groundwork and then all of a
01:20:28sudden i hit the big time so it was it was wonderful for me itv came with television commercials
01:20:42and eunice stubbs got an early tv break
01:20:47i mean i remember on a sunday night sunday night at the palladium
01:20:51in the breaks every break was the dairy box girl my girl she craves for dairy box craves for
01:20:59dairy box centers i was on more than bruce forsythe she's a dairy box girl
01:21:09by the mid-1950s there was full employment and a rise in living standards young people were staying
01:21:15on longer at school they and their families were protected by the welfare state and the nhs
01:21:21the young people of britain had never had it so good everything changed in the 1950s everything
01:21:29suddenly seemed to be brighter and lighter because television came in pop music suddenly took off in a
01:21:36really big way people started to cater for my generation for teenagers we became a market
01:21:49we were incredibly lucky i think to be the first teenagers people started to take interest in us
01:21:57it changed the way that people looked at us change the way people treated us
01:22:00we weren't just young adults or old children we were teenagers i had a tailor suit a draped jacket i had
01:22:11a thin slim gin tie i had pointy short toe shoes and i had glasses with slats on them and i just stand there
01:22:18going my dad was quite understanding most of the time but i got an italian suit and a
01:22:30da haircut and he wasn't at all pleased about coming back in his zoot suit rock and roll came in which i
01:22:39hated i mean i couldn't believe that these young men made a living out of three chords that's all the
01:22:46great there there there three guitars instead of drums and to me it was sacrilege
01:22:51but it wasn't all about rock and roll in clubs around britain modern jazz was thriving
01:23:09music suddenly burst on the scene burst into your life and it was it was wonderful
01:23:17it was exciting it was absolutely thrilling for a lot of people and i was one of them
01:23:31it was full of good music it really was and i used to go dancing on a very sort of friday saturday
01:23:37night in those days you know back it was very very silver innocent
01:23:49the 50s had quite a lot in common with the 40s in the sense that the um the 50s were
01:23:56a disciplined age
01:23:57people were polite punctilious
01:24:14i think everybody in those days uh started being interested in the opposite sex
01:24:20around about 15 16 i'm sure it may be a bit earlier these days
01:24:27i mean it was so much nicer in a way in as much as you won't ask to dance unless somebody
01:24:39thought you were the cat's whiskers
01:24:40well maybe i was just lucky but it was fun it was really fun
01:25:00girls were a long way off you know just touching a girl it was a long way off it was it was miles away
01:25:10i took my first girlfriend to the lounge cinema uh and to my horror i discovered the lady who lived
01:25:20next door was sitting behind so i sort of froze and totally ignored this very attractive young lady
01:25:27and so at the end of this at the end of the film she just got up and rushed away and never spoke to me
01:25:33i do remember in london particularly lots of couples snogging because you didn't go home
01:25:46you didn't go home and make love or anything and if you went away with your boyfriend to stay in a hotel
01:25:52you were mrs smith or mrs jones that you fooled anyone when you make me tell you i love you
01:26:00i mean you and that's not that long ago really
01:26:04they told me be sensible with your new love
01:26:09i suppose some people must have had sex
01:26:13otherwise the humanity would have died out but i certainly didn't
01:26:17the funny thing is that although sex is terribly important i had no idea that i was a gay woman
01:26:31i knew that i had incredible crushes on girls at school but i didn't know that you could be a lesbian
01:26:37i didn't know that was enough you know a possibility it just didn't seem to be something i ever knew
01:26:44anything about so nothing in my case actually physically happened until long after that
01:26:58britain wasn't ready for free love quite yet but there was no question that things were looking up
01:27:08the tough ambitious exhilarating years that followed victory
01:27:12had launched the victory generation into a brighter future
01:27:18i mean if i'd have been born in my father's generation i would have done what my father did
01:27:23i'd have gone down a pit at the age of 14 and i didn't and i think for that i'm eternally grateful
01:27:31and that's why i reflect on when i look back at the difference i mean i had hope because you know
01:27:36things changed dramatically and and and things opened and away you went if you if you if you wanted to
01:27:46i think we felt that we could do anything we wanted and that we could have anything we wanted
01:27:53because we knew we'd been deprived of so much during the war
01:27:57before and we were bloody well not going to be deprived of anything afterwards
01:28:03give me a kiss the bill a dream on thank you very much all right thank you thank you
01:28:20i know you haven't made me a kiss the bell a dream oh i've got another story actually
01:28:27i'm sorry i'll be here forever give me a kiss before you leave me and my imagination will feed my hungry
01:28:38heart leave me one thing before we part a kiss to build a dream
01:28:49when i'm alone with my fancies