In 2017, the great wartime singer Dame Vera Lynn will release a new album to celebrate her 100th birthday!

Vera Lynn has performed over 50 times at the Hall during her career. Her first appearance was on 11 December 1937, and her most recent was on 6 June 2014, at the BBC Radio 2 D-Day 70 Years On concert in aid of The Royal British Legion, SSAFA and SkillForce, when she sang a duet with Katherine Jenkins by video.

Between 1947 and 1994, Vera Lynn returned to the Hall almost annually to perform at the Dekho! Burma Reunion concerts for the servicemen who had fought in the Burma Campaign during the Second World War.

Watch Vera Lynn singing to the troops from 3:11:

Vera was dubbed the ‘Forces Sweetheart’, since it was the sound of her songs, including The White Cliffs of Dover, Wishing, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square and of course We’ll Meet Again, which had soothed the soldiers through the bleakest of times during the war. It was these songs which she performed again for the troops at the Royal Albert Hall reunions, and which have been re-orchestrated for the album, which features her original vocals.

‘It’s truly humbling that people still enjoy these songs from so many years ago, reliving the emotions of that time – I was after all just doing my job as a singer – and it’s so wonderful for me to hear my songs again so beautifully presented in a completely new way.’
Dame Vera Lynn