Inspired by conversations with many veterans following the publication of her grandfather’s wartime memoir, Victoria Panton-Bacon has gathered a moving collection of stories. These are stories of bravery, sadness, horror, doubt and longing, from ordinary people who lived under the long shadows cast by World War II and whose young lives were changed irrevocably. These were the young of a different age when work for most began at fourteen, and the world conspired to thrust them into the jaws of conflict. For them, war, the ultimate leveller, threw them into remarkable times, whether they were a merchant seaman, army officer, pilot, young Jewish girl, code breaker or Home Guard recruit. From one extraordinary story to the next, this is an important and immersive book. AUTHOR: Victoria Panton Bacon lives in Suffolk, with her two young boys, Rollo and Ranulph. She worked for Rt Hon Sir John Major both when he was Prime Minister and at Conservative Central Office and the House of Commons when he was writing his memoirs. This was followed by a career in broadcast journalism with the BBC, where she began as a producer on Breakfast with Frost and ended up in radio with the BBC World Service. Victoria founded Elizabeth’s Legacy of Hope in 2011 with her twin sister, Sarah, to raise money for children in developing countries who need prosthetic legs, and in 2014, she edited her grandfather’s World War II story, published by Penguin.