Vera Lynn

The very name Vera Lynn conjures scenes of barrage balloons dotting London’s skies and ordinary Britons enduring the German Blitz from air-raid shelters and Tube stations. Still in her twenties, she became England’s sweetheart amid the hardships of World War II.

Born Vera Margaret Welch in East Ham, London, to Bertram and Annie Welch one year before the First World War ended, she began performing at seven and took dance lessons as well. Adopting her maternal grandmother’s maiden name for the stage, she won early radio notice with her unaffected voice and natural warmth. At eighteen she joined Joe Loss’s orchestra and cut her first sides for the Crown label; by the close of the thirties, after spells with Charlie Kunz and Bert Ambrose, she secured her own radio series just as the “Phony War” concluded. When hostilities intensified in 1940, Lynn hosted the BBC’s Sincerely Yours, a program that endeared her to servicemen abroad through such poignant ballads as “White Cliffs of Dover,” “We’ll Meet Again,” “Wishing,” and “Yours.” Her Decca releases—following the label’s earlier absorption of Crown—sold briskly, and she further lifted spirits by appearing in wartime films, a stage revue, and troop concerts across Asia, earning recognition as a national treasure whose sentimental style fortified public morale.

Only months after the war’s end she startled listeners by announcing her retirement, yet by Christmas 1946 she had resumed limited recording and returned fully to the variety circuit and another BBC series in 1947. Decca capitalized on a 1948 American musicians’ strike by issuing her material stateside, yielding the Top Ten hit “You Can’t Be True, Dear.” Four years later she became the first British artist to reach number one on the U.S. charts when “Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart” held the summit for nine weeks. That same year her recordings claimed three of the twelve positions on England’s inaugural singles chart, published by New Musical Express in November. Her sole British chart-topper, “My Son My Son,” arrived in 1954. Throughout the fifties she shifted toward television while continuing radio and variety work; in the sixties, after moving from Decca to EMI, she embraced more contemporary fare that carried into the seventies. An OBE was conferred in 1969, followed by her appointment as Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1975. Although stage appearances grew rare in the eighties, she sang at the fortieth anniversary of D-Day and the fiftieth anniversary of the war’s outbreak, sustaining charitable commitments. In 2005 she addressed veterans on the sixtieth anniversary of VE Day.

Even in the new century, seven decades after her first recordings, her commercial reign persisted. At ninety-two, Lynn became the oldest artist to top the British album chart when Decca’s 2009 anthology We’ll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn debuted at number one, an achievement all the more striking given the simultaneous reissue of the entire Beatles catalog. Six years later, marking her centenary, she released the album 100, featuring fresh orchestral treatments of her classics alongside guest appearances by Aled Jones, Alfie Boe, and Alexander Armstrong. Vera Lynn died at her Sussex home on 18 June 2020 at the age of 103.