As the country marks Victory in Europe 80 years ago Ken Bell recalls his own ‘charmed’ wartime life.

There are street parties and other community events in West Devon, while solemn national events will pay tribute to all who made World War II victory possible.

And one person who will play a key role in the celebrations in Tavistock next week of many years of peace in Europe will be Ken.

On VE Day (Thursday, May 8) Ken will be a guest of honour at the lighting of the commemorative beacon on Whitchurch Down, close to where he lived as a boy with his siblings and mum as WWII evacuees from bombed out London. His story is also being told in a special VE Day exhibition at Tavistock Museum.

Ken will has vivid memories of VE Day 80 years ago, even though he was only eight and he was far away from the destructive consequences of the war that his family had fled.

He and his family – mum Eileen, sister June, brothers Eddie and Ronald and elder sister Ellen – were rushed out of London’s East End when the bombing of their streets in Bermondsey proved too dangerous to live a normal life.

By some form of evacuation lottery the family, with Ken aged only three, found themselves in Tavistock in September 1940 having escaped with their lives from a year of indiscriminate bombing raids on civilians.

They were to live an idyllic life in Whitchurch House and the associated farm as evacuees thanks to the owner Eleanor Beaver (known as Mrs B to all and related to the Duchess of Kent) who generously took wartime evacuated families into her home and made them feel like part of her family.

Ken remembers: “On VE Day Mrs B provided two donkeys to ride down the street on and the Salvation Army played in public and everyone was madly happy and celebrating peace. Of course I didn’t really understand the relief, being so young. But I knew my mum was very happy.”

On the downside, this did mean the Bells leaving Whitchurch House: “It was such a lovely household and Mrs B was the kindest person I knew. I think she became almost a surrogate mother because our mum was so busy with so many children.

“When we moved out she continued giving us a turkey at Christmas for years. She gave mum a job in the farm kitchen where she learned cooking.

“It was an idyllic existence for children. I spent so much time playing with a freedom we didn’t have in terraced Bermondsey, on the farm in a kind of Enid Blyton world.”

Unfortunately, Ken has a serious accident on the farm, losing his hearing in his left ear permanently, by falling on a plough spike. His ear was repeatedly attached and reattached and while recovering he passed the enforced bed rest by learning art by copying pictures Mrs B gave him from her collection which evolved into a lifelong hobby.

He later became a stonemason and now lives in Latchley near Gunnislake with Margaret, having never left the area he discovered a a small boy.