Overview
- In a note to author Victoria Panton Bacon, the Queen said the book will help children understand the years that secured the nation’s freedom.
- Their Second World War targets ages 8–14 and gathers previously untold testimonies from veterans and families, drawn from interviews, letters and diaries.
- One chapter features 100-year-old Ivor Foster’s account of flying as a Lancaster air gunner in an RAF operation involving 1,079 aircraft over Essen on March 11, 1945.
- Foster described dense smoke, radar-guided attacks and a five-and-a-half-hour mission during the large late‑war raid on German factories and transport links.
- Panton Bacon told the Press Association that some material was carefully edited for younger readers without lessening the gravity of the veterans’ experiences, and the Queen has praised her earlier wartime books in past letters.