Eighty-one years ago today, the guns fell silent across Europe.
On 8 May 1945, after six brutal years of war, Britain breathed a collective sigh of relief. People poured into the streets, danced on the Mall, wept and cheered with joy.
They were ordinary people - men in uniform facing brutality on foreign battlefields, women running factories and farms, children bundled onto trains as bombs fell on British cities. They were asked to give everything, and they did. They are rightly called the greatest generation.
Today, as we mark VE Day 81 and give thanks to all those who served and secured peace, our enduring British character continues to shine through.
A love of family, a belief in getting on, a sense of selflessness and generosity woven through our everyday lives, and a quiet but stubborn conviction that this country can always be better.
Even as we navigate an unsettling period due to a war in the Middle East that is driving up the cost of living at home, we aim to emulate the values that defined Britain through the Second World War.
That means responding to conflict in the Middle East with calm and steady dialogue, supporting our brave troops protecting allies in the region and calling out outrages like the Iranian regime attempting to block freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.
Eighty-one years on, the Government's programme to commemorate the end of the Second World War matters so much.
The National Theatre's The Next Morning school programme has encouraged 10,000 young people to share their hopes for themselves and their country. Our Freedom: Then and Now, a national touring exhibition visiting nineteen venues across the UK, brings together sixty community-led projects in a living conversation between past and present.
Last year, the Government also launched a £2 million fund to protect war memorials across the country, and we are proud to support the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and like-minded organisations who tend to the graves of British and Commonwealth servicemen and women - here at home and in the far-flung corners of the world where they fell. Their work ensures no one who gave their life is forgotten.
What the wartime generation understood is that hardship is not the end of the story. In 1945, the country was exhausted and facing an entirely uncertain future.
The Government of that year chose to be bold anyway - building the NHS, investing in housing, laying the foundations of a fairer society. They did not wait for easier times. They made better ones.
We can never repay the war generation, but we will defend the world they gave us - Stephanie Peacock
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No fund, exhibition or commemoration can truly repay what this generation gave us. The freedoms we enjoy, the lives we have built, and the country we live in rest on their shoulders.
The Government is committed to ensuring that the memories of the Second World War generation do not fade. We will continue to tell their stories, and we will continue to teach our young people about them.
We will continue to strive for the world they fought for.
And today, as we do every day, we will remember them.
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