Queen pays tribute to Britain’s lockdown spirit as she salutes VE day

The Queen paid tribute to Britain’s lockdown spirit tonight on the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

The Monarch said Second World War heroes would be proud of the nation’s response to the health crisis.

THE 94-year-old monarch, who was 13 when war broke out in 1939, added: ‘It may seem hard that we cannot mark this special anniversary as we would wish. Instead we remember from our homes and our doorsteps.

‘But our streets are not empty; they are filled with the love and the care that we have for each other.

‘And when I look at our country today, and see what we are willing to do to protect and support one another, I say with pride that we are still a nation those brave soldiers, sailors and airmen would recognise and admire.’

Her speech, made to the very second that her father, George VI, gave his VE Day speech 75 years ago, was filmed in the white drawing room at Windsor last week, where she and husband, Philip, 98, are isolating.

After the broadcast, the nation was invited to open doors and windows and take part in sing-a-long of Forces’ Sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn’s wartime anthem We’ll Meet Again, during the BBC’s VE Day 75 show.

The Queen’s words were her second televised address during the coronavirus crisis.

During her father George VI’s wartime speech, he said: ‘Let us remember the men of all the services and the women in all of the services who have laid down their lives.

‘We have come to the end of our tribulation and they are not with us at the moment of our rejoicing.’

Speaking about the start of the war, the Queen, then schoolgirl Princess Elizabeth, said: ‘The outlook seemed bleak, the end distant, the outcome uncertain.