80 years after VE Day, I fear the lessons of that war are being ignored

It is 4am in May 2025, and I am sitting up in bed, sleepless, looking out at a huge full moon illuminating the still world.

- Sheila Hancock

Eighty-five years ago, in 1940, a seven-year-old, silently weeping child lay on a cracked leatherette sofa in urine-soaked pyjamas, looking through an alien window, praying that same moon would protect my mother and father from the bombs falling in London.

That morning, my father had tied a label to my gas mask strap with my name and address written on it, and waved me off from the platform barrier after making me recite, yet again, my identity number in case I became detached from my group of evacuees. It was CJFQ29/4; my old brain has forgotten many things, but that number is deeply engrained. The details of what happened next are confused, until the door at the bottom of the stairs in my billet was slammed closed by my unwilling hosts, and I lay trembling on that settee. As an adult, my first reaction to everything is fear, which I put down to my wartime childhood. Also, fortunately, my ability to survive. After two runaway escapades I was allowed to return to London, preferring bombs to bullying locals.