Homes for Indian nannies
Sherlock Holmes
Christabel Pankhurst
Suffragette Sophia Duleep Singh
Captain Scott's Diary
Suffragettes protest
Indians on the Western Front
World War I
Russian Revolution
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
The General Strike
The Great Depression
Gandhi in Britain
British Union of Fascists
Appeasement
Kristallnacht
Wanted poster for Hitler
World War II ultimatum letter
The Keys
Dunkirk evacuation
Dig for Victory
Make Do and Mend
Auschwitz survivor
The Atom Bomb
Independence and Partition
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
NHS established
Immigration from India
Windrush: post-war immigration
Chinese restaurants
Middle Eastern food
Wolfenden Report
Paul Robeson's Othello
Man lands on the moon
Cuban Missile Crisis
Assassination of Kennedy
Beatles arrive in the USA
Mods and Rockers
England win the World Cup
Robert Kennedy Assassinated
Dr. Martin Luther King
Student protests, Paris
Women's liberation
Punk fanzine
The Oz trial
The Black Panther
President Nixon resigns
The Sex Pistols
Charles and Diana marry
Tiananmen Square massacre
Fall of the Berlin Wall
Release of Nelson Mandela
Peace declared: Northern Ireland
The Belfast Agreement
It was a defeat that felt like a victory: the miraculous rescue of 300,000 British and allied troops in France from the Germans during World War II. It happened in May and June 1940, when the British Expeditionary Force, together with French and Belgian forces, had been sent to fight off the advancing Germans who had already run through the Netherlands and Belgium. But the British had underestimated the strength, sophistication and firepower of the Germans, who rapidly surrounded them.
The only escape route was the harbour and beaches of Dunkirk - beaches too shallow for military craft. But countless little steamers, yachts and fishing boats, some taken over by the navy, some piloted by their citizen owners, ferried the trapped soldiers to bigger vessels at sea, and then in safety back home. At a time when invasion of Britain by the Germans seemed imminent, the celebrated escape from Dunkirk came as reassurance and encouragement that they were not all-powerful.
Image Copyright: John Frost Newspaper Archive
Shelfmark: British Library Newspaper Archive