Keep Smiling Through: My Wartime Story

In the year of her 100th birthday, Dame Vera Lynn’s fascinating and life-affirming wartime memoir from the forces’ sweetheart’s of her adventures entertaining the troops in far-flung Burma.

In the year of her 100th birthday, Dame Vera Lynn’s fascinating and life-affirming wartime memoir from the forces’ sweetheart’s of her adventures entertaining the troops in far-flung Burma.

‘I was just twenty-seven years old when I went to Burma. It was an experience that changed my life for ever. Up until that time I had not really travelled anywhere at all, apart from one touring visit to Holland with a band I was singing with before the war, and I had certainly never been in an aeroplane. But I wanted to make a difference, to do my bit.’

And she did.

Written with her daughter, Virginia Lewis-Jones this is a powerful and life-affirming account of the time she spent with troops in wartime Burma. Based, in part on a diary she kept, alongside unpublished personal letters and photographs from surviving veterans and their families, it explores why it was such a life-defining event for her and shows how her presence helped the soldiers, airmen and others who heard her sing.