Wartime Entertainment

It might have ended 80 years ago, but we still have a warm, nostalgic relationship with the Second World War, due in no small part to the love we have for the entertainment from those turbulent times. Singers like Vera Lynn ¿ the ¿Forces Sweetheart¿ ¿ Gracie Fields, Anne Shelton, and the Andrews Sisters, bandleader Glenn Miller whose fate is still a mystery, films like _Gone With The Wind_, _Casablanca_, _Mrs Miniver_, _In Which We Serve_, _Goodbye Mr Chips_, and morale-boosting radio programmes like _ITMA_, _Music While You Work_ and _Hi Gang!_ all helped Britain to stay calm and carry on as it sheltered from the bombs, worked long hours in munitions factories, and prayed that its menfolk fighting on land, sea and in the air to bring about victory would one day return home safely. _Wartime Entertainment: How Britain Kept Smiling Through the Second World War_ relives the wartime years, looking at the songs and the singers, at the role that the BBC ¿ ¿Auntie¿ ¿ played not only in entert