Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

Nazi Germany had finally been defeated. And for 24 hours, Britons could let their hair down and celebrate. But not everyone was in the

mood to party. 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of VE Day and John Willis has told the story of the

day via the voices of Britons who lived through it in a feature for the May issue of BBC History magazine.

Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizson, he discusses what these testimonies can reveal

about the state of mind of a nation after six long years of war.

You've written a book, The People's War, Unheard Stories, which draws on a vast oral history project of wartime testimonies that was carried out by the BBC 20 years ago in 2005.

How did you go about condensing a database of, I think, I've read it was like 47,000

testimonies into a single book? How did you choose which testimonies to choose and which to

discard? Well, it is an astonishing archive, the people's wolf, as you say, 47,000

testimonies and memories covering the whole range of the war,

both at home and overseas. And the biggest challenge of all was try to curate those voices

into a coherent book that told the story of the war, but also gave some characters who kept popping up whose stories carried

the narrative through the six years of the war. And to try to condense them, I just had to use my

journalistic experience, really, to choose what really stood out. I've written four other books about

the Second World War, so I've got some understanding of that particular moment in our history.

This is a grand floor history, as it were, isn't it? It's one that offers a perspective of ordinary

Britons throughout the war, rather than purely those of politicians, diplomats and generals.

I mean, how important is it to give that perspective, that side of the story?

Well, I think that as we come up to the 80th anniversary of the end of the war,

I think it's really important, particularly as we're living in slightly precarious times,

to remember what it was like to be on the front line in a battle.

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