Deaths 2022

Deaths 2021

Deaths 2020

Deaths 2019

Deaths 2018

Deaths 2017

Deaths 2016

Deaths 2015

Deaths 2014

Deaths 2013

Deaths 2012

Deaths 2011

Deaths 2010

Deaths 2009


Full list by date of death

(Dame) Vera Lynn

Singer/actress

Born - 20 March 1917, East Ham, London, England
Died - 18 June 2020

Flaxen-haired, blue-eyed band singer with distinctive overbite, winning personality and strong, bell-like voice. On the tall side for the 1940s at 5ft 7in, the enormously popular vocalist, born Vera Welch, took her grandmother's maiden name for her singing career. Beginning with Ambrose and His Orchestra, she soon began making hit records, and became the 'forces' sweetheart' in the WW2 years, especially after her recording of We'll Meet Again in 1939, followed by her radio show, Sincerely Yours. Her popularity was strengthened by her battlefront tours near the Far Eastern front, mainly in Burma when she fearlessly entertained the troops despite bombs and other action going off a few hundred yards away. On returns to Britain, she appeared in a few wartime films, her songs (if not, perhaps, her performances) providing fresh inspiration in We'll Meet Again (1942), Rhythm Serenade (1943) and One Exciting Night (1944), later revised for American audiences as You Can't Do Without Love. She had first appeared in films as an extra in A Fire Has Been Arranged (1935), and there were later cameos as herself in Tin Pan Alley (1951), Venus from Vestoe (1962), A War to Remember (2001), Norman Wisdom His Story (2010) and Tales from Tin Pan Alley (2018). There were also several runs of her own TV series. Somewhat belatedly created dame in 1975, she continued issuing hit songs and albums well into her nineties, by which time she risen to the status of national institution. She died from a severe chest infection.