Obituary, Dame Vera Lynn (1917-2020)

The much-loved British singer, actress and songwriter Dame Vera Lynn, whose now-iconic broadcasts and tours during World War Two brought comfort to millions, has died aged 103.

The daughter of a dressmaker and a plumber, Vera Margaret Welch was born in East Ham in 1917, and adopted her maternal grandmother’s maiden name eleven years later, by which time she was already four years into her performing career.

In early adulthood Lynn supported herself by working in an administrative job with a shipping company, alongside singing on radio broadcasts and making guest appearances on recordings with various dance-bands; her first solo recording was released in 1936 on Crown, which later became part of Decca Records. (Lynn would spend over two decades with Decca before signing to EMI in 1960). In the years before the War Lynn recorded with Mantovani, Bert Ambrose and Charlie Kunz, and went on to have significant commercial success with recordings of Red Sails in the Sunset and The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot.

It was of course during World War Two that Lynn’s gift for providing solace and connection through music truly came into its own; she began singing in London air-raid shelters early in the conflict, launching her radio programme Sincerely Yours in 1941, and going on to perform to troops in Egypt, Burma and India. Two songs which became indelibly associated with her were Ross Parker and Hughie Charles’s We’ll Meet Again and Nat Burton and Walter Kent’s The White Cliffs of Dover; the popularity of both songs (and Lynn’s own status as a national treasure) endured long after the end of the War, and in recent weeks they proved a source of comfort to many people facing isolation and separation from loved ones in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, with Queen Elizabeth II referencing the lyrics of We’ll Meet Again in her address to the UK at the end of April.

Lynn’s recording and performing career continued to flourish throughout the 1950s and 60s, with hit singles including Auf Wiederseh’n, Sweetheart (1952), My Son, My Son (1954), and It Hurts To Say Goodbye (1967); during the 60s and 70s she also appeared regularly on television, both as a guest on chat shows and as host of her own BBC variety series.

Lynn was awarded a CBE in 1969, and was made a Dame in the 1975 Birthday Honours List in recognition of her charity work (causes which she supported including breast cancer and cerebral palsy). Other awards and honours included the Burma Star, the Freedom of the City of London in 1978, and the award for Outstanding Contribution To Music at the 2018 Classic Brits.

Lynn gave her final public performance in 2005, when she sang a short snippet of We’ll Meet Again as part of the 60th anniversary VE Day celebrations in London; four years later her third autobiography Some Sunny Day was published by Harper Collins and became a Sunday Times bestseller, with The Guardian praising the memoir as ‘understated, professional and totally genuine’. She died at home in East Sussex today; a documentary on her life and work will be broadcast in tribute on the BBC this evening.

Dame Vera Lynn - a selected discography and bibliography