Dame Vera releases new album to mark 70th Anniversary of D-Day.

What a gal!  97 years old and still singing for the troops.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2584831/We-meet-Dame-Vera-releases-new-album-age-97-mark-70th-anniversary-D-Day.html

We meet again! Dame Vera releases new album at the age of 97 to mark 70th anniversary of D-Day

When she started performing, George V was king, George Gershwin was dominating the music industry and Margaret Thatcher was yet to be born.

But 90 years after making her stage debut, Dame Vera Lynn is not ready to give up her music career just yet.

The Forces Sweetheart, who celebrates her 97th birthday today, is to release a new collection of her work in June to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day.

As well as wartime classics such as We’ll Meet Again and The White Cliffs Of Dover, the album Vera Lynn: National Treasure – The Ultimate Collection will also include previously unreleased material discovered by her daughter Virginia.

The 40-track album comes five years after Dame Vera became the oldest recording artist to top the album charts, beating off competition from the Arctic Monkeys and a host of re-mastered Beatles albums to reach the number one spot in 2009.

Commenting on her latest release, Dame Vera said: ‘It’s wonderful that my songs are still enjoyed, especially if it encourages people to commemorate what happened 70 years ago.

‘It’s moving for me to relive those days, and humbling to know that people still think of me – after all, it was simply my duty to keep singing.’

Dame Vera travelled thousands of miles to entertain the troops during the Second World War, even visiting the ‘Forgotten’ Fourteenth Army, whose efforts in the bitter Burma campaign were often overlooked.

In 1959, she received an OBE and was made a Dame in 1975.




A good friend of the Queen Mother, her last public performance was at Buckingham Palace in 1995 for a ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of VE Day.

Her reputation has shown no sign of fading in recent years, and she was voted the person ‘who most represents the spirit of the last century’ in a 2000 poll.

Dame Vera married Harry Lewis, an RAF musician who played with the Squadronaires, in 1941.




They had one child together, Virginia, in 1946.
Harry died following a stroke in 1999.
Dame Vera continues to live in the same East Sussex house she has had since the 1960s, next door to her daughter.
This year Dame Vera becomes the first person in music history to celebrate 90 years of showbusiness, after making her stage debut aged seven at a working men’s club in the East End.
Her new album means she is the only recording artist in the world to have spanned the pop charts from 1940s to the 21st century.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2584831/We-meet-Dame-Vera-releases-new-album-age-97-mark-70th-anniversary-D-Day.html#ixzz2wSj9kiZp
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

97? Heavens, I hadn't realised how old Dame Vera is - and still going strong.   

That's why I posted it Bonny. Was stunned.