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I've just a read an autobiographical letter that my Uncle wrote to his two sons (my cousins). The letter runs to many pages, and details his life between the ages of 7 and 13, between the outbreak of World War II and VJ (Victory Over Japan) Day, when the war was officially ended. It's a fantastically entertaining document, because my uncle is a great raconteur, and it's full of interesting family history, and anecdotes, and biographical details about his young life (and by extension that of my father too), during an unimaginable time for anyone who didn't live through that period.

Many things that I read will stay with me. My uncle chewing a softly heated lump of tarmac, because it was flavoursome (it had a smoky flavour, he says), and he was so starved of sweets/toffees to chew because of rationing. But, he also says that you didn't dare let it harden in your mouth as you'd never remove it from your molars. My dad got blown off his bike in a V2 rocket blast. He was on his way to work. He was unharmed, barring a few scratches. He picked himself up, dusted himself down, and continued cycling to work. He was 16. My grandad used to play mid-fielder for the police football team. He was a constable at the time. As a family they spent night after night in the air-raid shelters during the blitz, my nan, my dad, and my uncle, while my grandad was on duty somewhere in the city. When the war finished my uncle had no recollection of what normal life had been like before the war, he'd been too young to remember it. Life during wartime was his normal life.

One thing he wrote really struck me, and especially after watching the recent Euro 2020 football competition. In a section about the entertainments (films and radio shows) he'd enjoyed as a kid during the war, my uncle mentioned that every Sunday evening the BBC would play the National Anthems of our allies. The anthems of France, Poland, Holland etc were all played. He said the Dutch anthem was always his favourite. But the family listened respectfully to all of them. They were played for the benefit of the many, many people who'd sought refuge in this country, after the Nazis had over run their homelands, and also for the benefit of all those who may have been listening on hidden radios, at great risk to themselves, all across Europe. I thought this was a wonderfully heartwarming piece of history about the war that I'd never heard before. It also brought to mind the shameful booing of our opponents' National Anthems, by England's so-called football fans, at Wembley during the Euro finals. What a shame, that as a nation, we have moved from honouring and respecting these other countries to deriding them so vocally. They are our neighbours and allies still, though our current government would rather we believe they are the enemy, because that better suits their failing agenda and it's always handy to have someone else to blame.