The days when Britain’s rock-solid unity with its ally America ensured a lasting peace in Europe may seem to be fading.
But as leaders work to secure a ceasefire after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, plans have been announced to celebrate the 80th anniversaries of the end of the Second World War.
Four days of events are earmarked across Britain to mark the week of Victory in Europe Day – which sparked worldwide celebrations on May 8, 1945.
There will also be a service to commemorate Victory in Japan Day, three months later on August 15.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is co-ordinating the events due to begin on Bank Holiday Monday, May 5, at The Cenotaph war memorial in London’s Whitehall.
It will be dressed in Union Flags, echoing its 1920 unveiling. A military procession will make its way from there to Buckingham Palace, followed by a flypast of historic and current warplanes and the Red Arrows.
A national ‘street party’ will then be staged, just as rather more spontaneous celebrations were held in 1945.This time it will be on the Royal Navy warship HMS Belfast on the Thames.
The Belfast, now a floating museum, helped win victory in Europe by firing some of the first shots of the D-Day invasion of France on June 6, 1944.
Ideas and inspiration for street parties across the country are being offered by The Together Coalition and The Big Lunch organisations.
Tuesday May 6 will see a return to the Tower of London of the ceramic poppies which drew huge crowds when first unveiled to mark the centenary of the start of the First World War in 2014.
This time they will be inside the Tower, not the moat, with 30,000 arranged to represent a wound at the historic fortification – which retains real scars from a bomb in the Blitz. Elsewhere historic landmarks will be illuminated.
Wednesday May 7 marks 80 years since a radio newsflash told the population VE Day would begin the next morning.
This year there will be a Victory in Europe Day Anniversary Concert in medieval Westminster Hall.
On the anniversary of VE Day itself, Thursday May 8 – when the Allies accepted Germany’s unconditional surrender – a service will be held at Westminster Abbey, ‘to give thanks and honour a generation’.
The VE Day commemorations will be topped off by a concert at Horse Guards Parade in London, in a bid to recreate the euphoric scenes of the day itself.
Ten thousand members of the public will be treated to a show featuring ‘stars of stage and screen and military musicians’ telling ‘the story of victory and the legacy of the Second World War in Europe’.
As a longer term project, the Imperial War Museums are asking us all to ransack our attics in search of wartime letters so they can be used to bring the conflict’s human effects to life for schoolchildren.
VJ Day will be remembered in more subdued form on Friday August 15, with a service at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire for those who fought and died in the Far East.
Last night Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said: ‘The 80th anniversaries of VE and VJ Day are important opportunities for communities to come together to pay tribute to all those who served in the Second World War.’
Defence Secretary John Healey added: ‘Our duty today is to safeguard the British values they sacrificed so much to uphold.’