{"id":143414,"date":"2020-05-09T01:16:51","date_gmt":"2020-05-08T23:16:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/2020\/05\/09\/britain-was-led-by-churchill-then-its-led-by-a-churchill-tribute-act-now\/"},"modified":"2020-05-09T01:16:51","modified_gmt":"2020-05-08T23:16:51","slug":"britain-was-led-by-churchill-then-its-led-by-a-churchill-tribute-act-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/?p=143414","title":{"rendered":"Britain was led by Churchill then \u2013 it\u2019s led by a Churchill tribute act now"},"content":{"rendered":"

With coronavirus lockdown subduing VE Day, contrasts with 75 years ago were many and variedCoronavirus \u2013 latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageSomehow the quiet made it louder. By rights, marking the 75th anniversary of VE Day in the midst of a pandemic that has confined us to our homes \u2013 forcing us to keep our distance from one another, denying us the right to gather in crowds \u2013 should have muffled this commemoration. A celebration in private would surely feel like no celebration at all. Katherine Jenkins singing to an empty Albert Hall, streets with no street parties and the pubs all shut: how could that add up to anything other than a damp squib?And yet Friday\u2019s marking of the end of the second world war struck a deeper chord than it might, had it been just another sunny bank holiday. Yes, the usual rituals had to be suspended. There could be no wreath-laying at local memorials; instead, Prince Charles and Camilla laid two small wreaths on their own, in a crowdless corner of Balmoral, watched by a lone piper. There could be no veterans\u2019 parades, no reunions for those who had served, no grateful handshakes from the politicians: 102-year-old former staff sergeant Ernie Horsfall had to make do with a Zoom call from Boris Johnson. And there were limited opportunities for silliness: the Winston Churchill impersonators were all dressed up with nowhere to go, forced to perform their cigar-and-V-sign shtick online. Continue reading…
\nVia: Britain was led by Churchill then \u2013 it\u2019s led by a Churchill tribute act now<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With coronavirus lockdown subduing VE Day, contrasts with 75 years ago were many and variedCoronavirus \u2013 latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageSomehow the quiet made it louder. By rights, marking the 75th anniversary of VE Day in the midst of a pandemic that has confined us to our homes \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=143414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=143414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=143414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=143414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}