“At the start of the second world war, Vera Lynn … was an up-and-coming dance band singer. By 1945” — thanks to her hits “We’ll Meet Again” and “The White Cliffs of Dover” — “this working-class young woman had become a symbol of the British wartime spirit, with a status comparable to that of the patrician prime minister, Winston Churchill. After the war, her friend Harry Secombe liked to joke that ‘Churchill didn’t beat the Nazis. Vera sang them to death.'” – The Guardian