'My mum Dame Vera Lynn did incredible things in her final years but she never sang - not once'

Daily Mirror

08-05-2025

It is five years since we sadly lost Dame Vera Lynn, but carrying on her famous parent's charity work, Virginia Lewis-Jones speaks to Siobhan McNally about the nation's Force's Sweetheart, and downsizing after a life-time of memories
Dame Vera Lynn's dear friend Sir Harry Secombe once joked that, 'Churchill didn't beat the Nazis. Vera sang them to death.'
Which wasn't too far from the truth because, when touring Burma in 1944 to boost morale among war weary troops, the 'Forces' Sweetheart' was so close to the battle lines as the Japanese advanced on India, her rich contralto voice would have floated over the entrenched enemy lines.
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'Japanese soldiers could only have been three miles away while she was singing – they would definitely have heard her,' explains Dame Vera's daughter Virginia Lewis-Jones, as we look at old military snaps in her book about her mother, Keep Smiling Through.
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Not many entertainers would go somewhere as dangerous as Burma, and it was Vera's bravery that won her an army of fans at war and back home. Her three-month stint in the jungle must have affected her deeply, because she spent a lifetime raising funds for veterans and their families.
We're sitting in her daughter's conservatory on a cloudy day, as patches of blue poke through the greyness – enough to, as Virginia says, 'Make a sailor's shirt'.
Birthday cards and vases of colourful blooms mark Virginia's 79th. But the pretty bungalow has the squished feel of someone who has just downsized. 'We sold Mummy's house last year – it was far too big for just the two of us,' explains Virginia.
It must have been difficult as only child to leave the houseful of memories but, clearly a chip off the old block, Virginia only admits to missing the swimming pool. 'I just use the local spa instead,' she shrugs.
Virginia lost her father first in 1998, which was a terrible blow. But it brought the mother and daughter even closer. Now the fifth anniversary of her mother's death is looming, alongside the nation's marking of 80 years of the end of the Second World War.
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Having celebrated her 100th birthday with great fanfare, a new album, birthday wishes from her friend, the late Queen Elizabeth II, and an incredible cake of the White Cliffs of Dover, Dame Vera passed away, aged 103, from pneumonia in June 2020.
'Mummy's brain was still very active, it was just, you know, she got very frail,' recalls Virginia.
Now living a mile or so from where her parents are buried in the village churchyard, Virginia and her husband Tom, 84, have squeezed a lifetime's memorabilia of both their extraordinary lives, as well as Dame Vera's, into their cottage.
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There's not an inch of space left on the walls, where Virginia's paintings hang among many others – a hobby inherited from her mother – or among the busy shelves full of Tom's collections from his RAF career, vintage ceramics and artefacts from his passion for palaeontology.
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After growing up in Finchley, North London, Virginia moved to Ditchling, East Sussex, as a teenager with her parents, Vera Lynn and Harry Lewis. Her saxophonist father so successfully managed his wife's singing career after the war, that she never went out of fashion.
Famously appearing on stage, aged 68, with rock band Hawkwind in an anti-drugs concert, she was also immortalised in Pink Floyd's moving song Vera on their album The Wall.
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'Oh Mummy thought the whole thing was hysterical,' laughs Virginia, who shared her mother's birthday month.
'Yes I've just had my 79th and Mummy's birthday – or Mama as I called her – is the 20th,' nods Virginia, when we meet in March. 'I sounded so much like her that when I answered the phone, people thought it was Mummy,' she chuckles.
Squadron leader Tom's going a bit deaf, and is not as steady on his feet after a stroke 18 months ago, but their lives are busy and fulfilled. They are, sadly, mourning the recent loss of their beloved pet.
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'We discovered our 15-year-old Jack Russell Digby had a 10cm tumour in his spleen last month,' says Virginia. 'He got ill very suddenly and the vet suggested we didn't bring him home. So you know, one minute he was here, and then next minute… gone…'
Virginia has a step family from Tom's side and a large number of relatives. Many have worn uniforms and served their country. 'Must be something in the family!' she adds.
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Chatting to Virginia, it is unnervingly like talking to Dame Vera herself and their family resemblance is remarkable.
When watching one of the three war films her mother made, Tom once remarked to his wife: 'Oh God – she's just like you.'
Friends in the country call her Ginny, but she reveals: 'Mummy called me Verge – I hated it, but just put up with it. The family still calls me Verge.'
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Despite growing up as the daughter of one of the most famous women of the 20th century, Virginia led a very normal life - although she was allowed to attend when her mother threw showbiz parties at home.
'I was allowed to serve canapés to guests, and I always remember at one of her parties there was a cowboy called Tex Ritter,' she says. 'I was into ponies at the time and I asked him, 'Did you bring your horse with you?''
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The singing cowboy, who used to star with his horse White Flash, replied kindly to the little English girl. 'He said, 'No honey, I couldn't bring him over with me unfortunately.''
Along with Secombe, Virginia reveals: 'Mummy and Spike Milligan were very friendly.' The daughter of an East Ham plumber and dressmaker, a young Vera Margaret Welch began singing publicly aged seven, before taking her grandmother's maiden name Lynn.
During the Blitz, she would sing to scared people sheltering from bombs in London's tube stations. But her BBC radio series, Sincerely Yours, which kept the soldiers at the front in touch with their loved ones at home, was what made her a household name.
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An ex BBC researcher, Virginia reveals: 'The BBC at the time thought it was too emotive, which was bonkers. Anyway, Mummy carried on – she just felt that forces fighting abroad needed to know their families were okay, and vice versa. She brought families together.'
Interestingly, Vera never learned to read music, while Virginia was made to learn piano and guitar as a girl because of her musician father.
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It's probably just as well she couldn't, in her words 'hold a tune', because she would have forever been compared to Vera.
Instead, she worked in fashion and as a researcher at the BBC. 'I worked on Parkinson and also Crackerjack! I got into trouble with the lovely Floella – now Baroness Benjamin – who'd just had her long plaits done,' she laughs. 'I told them they mustn't splurge her, but the message didn't get through – and she was absolutely furious!'
Dame Vera's final official public performance was at a VE Day 50th anniversary concert in Hyde Park, London, when she was 78 in 1995.
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According to Virginia she never sang again, not even at home. 'She never sang privately,' says Virginia firmly. 'Never once.' Instead, she kept herself very busy with her painting hobby, completing over 400 watercolour and oil artworks, which have all been archived in a catalogue.
'Her botanical art was especially fine,' says Virginia, showing me some of her favourite paintings in the catalogue. 'And she used to do tapestry – her mother, Nana, was a court dressmaker, you know.'
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When we meet, Virginia and Tom have just returned from a few weeks on France's Cote-d'Azur in their holiday flat in the seaside resort of Golfe-Juan, which she inherited from her parents.
Dame Vera, whose many accolades included being made a Companion of Honour in the late Queen's 90th birthday honours, was deeply touched to be made an honorary citizen of St Sever in Normandy.
'There's a memorial in the town to an English bomber crew who were shot down, but refused to bail so they could fly clear of a school full of children below,' explains Virginia. 'The memorial is inscribed, 'They gave their youth in St Sever so that peace could flourish in Europe'.'
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Looking after her mother's legacy is a full time job – or as Virginia calls it, 'Running the business!' She still receives letters from all over the world, and is very active in the running of Dame Vera Lynn's Children's Charity.
'Mummy was so important – and is still important – to so many people because of all the work she did, and not just during the war, she made millions for charities, you know,' says Virginia, proudly.
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An appeal for a permanent memorial to Dame Vera by sculptor Paul Day was launched by Sir David Amess before he was killed in a shocking attack at his MP surgery in Basildon, Essex, in 2021, and is yet to reach the £1.5m needed.
A statue to the Forces' Sweetheart seems the very least the nation can do for someone who was described as, 'One of two women who exemplified the spirit of the 20th century – Her Majesty the Queen and Dame Vera Lynn.'
Or as Virginia puts it in her plain-speaking way: 'Mummy was a whizzy-widget really. What you saw is what you got.'
• Please donate to the Dame Vera statue fund at dameveralynnmemorialstatue.co.uk