8 May 2025, 16:00

By Andrew Marr

I was lucky to be smack at the heart of the 80th anniversary of VE Day service at Westminster Abbey earlier today.

We heard a short, heart-stopping extract of Winston Churchill’s VE Day speech from 1945. After it, today’s service was everything you would hope for – glittering, moving and immaculately organized. Angel-faced choristers; military trumpeters; the King and Queen; William and Kate; the Prime Minister; many other politicians past and present – David Cameron, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Sadiq Khan and Angela Rayner. Leaders of all the major faith groups; uniforms of all kinds - copes, robes, swords, feathers, clothing stitched with gold, soaring music, oompah-pomp. In short, the British State put on a jolly good show. It didn’t miss the human touch – there were extracts from letters of the time, veterans in wheelchairs, probably for the last time at this kind of service. Children and teenagers were included and the religious heart of the service........

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