Last night I watched the programme that reminded me why I pay a licence fee (for some time now I have been unhappy with too much of the news coverage – but that’s a discussion to be had over a cup of tea or a single malt).

Children of the Blitz on BBC 2 was one of the most sensitively made and moving documentaries I have ever seen. As I watched it (tissues in hand) I recalled the stories that my darling parents told of war time and, more importantly, the ones Dad wrote down and had never told us.

The East End, being near the docks, was mercilessly pounded night after night.

And on the next page

Where had he hidden these memories and where had his father hidden the horrors of The Battle of the Somme and all the devastation he witnessed when serving in the First World War?

The destruction of buildings and whole areas the length and breadth of this land were described by those who were children at the time of the Blitz. The film footage was extraordinary and horrifying – yet the people of this country rebuilt and recovered and we asked all involved to put away their memories and carry on. They did but one little boy (now in his nineties) wept as he recalled the loss of his father fighting to liberate Europe from the Nazis. I wept with him when he asked us not to forget the father he barely knew who gave his life so that we could be free.