Their Finest Hour
A very friendly gentleman contact me a few days ago. Matthew, project manager of Their Finest Hour. He asked me if could make a blog post about the upcoming Their Finest Hour. After reading about it I gladly obliged.
A noble project in their own words
Many of us have war-related stories and objects that have been passed down to us from our parents, grandparents and other family members. Help us build our archive of their memories by sharing these stories and objects with us today.
Their Finest Hour is a University of Oxford project that aims to collect and digitally archive the everyday stories and objects of the Second World War that have been passed down from generation to generation.
Over the course of the popular Lest We Forget First World War project, many people asked whether we were going to organise a similar project for the Second World War. Thanks to funding from the University of Oxford and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, we can now say, 'yes'!
More importantly, we are doing this now because the stories and objects of the men, women, and children who were part of the 1939-1945 generation are being lost. Very few families in Britain and the Commonwealth were untouched by the war. In what was a truly global conflict, over 8.5 million people from the Empire and Dominions served in all major theatres of the war. Many of those affected have since passed their stories and objects onto their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all of whom now act as custodians of their relatives’ remarkable legacy.
The photographs, letters, diaries, medals and other artefacts symbolise the experiences of the wartime generation, and it is vital - for individuals, families and communities across Britain and the Commonwealth - to preserve and value this heritage before it is lost to posterity.
