The Latest Breaking News from Dunkirk

During the early years of the second world war, George Orwell believed that England’s revolutionary moment had arrived. The defeat at Dunkirk had discredited the country’s ruling elite. Their bungling had left England on the verge of invasion and defeat.

In Ian McEwan’s Atonement (2001), aspiring writer 13-year-old Briony Tallis glimpses a world of opaque “adult emotion”. Holding a pen and blank paper before her, she feels a powerful impulse to write in order to impose order and meaning on adulthood’s slippery uncertainties.

'It was like a scene from Dunkirk.'

Lawrence Churcher, 102, is believed to have been the last Royal Navy veteran from the Second World War evacuation.

Democrats learned important lessons and developed crucial new strategies. They survived — but they didn't win

Flight Lieutenant William Gregory, who took part in the Dunkirk and D-Day operations, destroyed 23 German aircraft during World War Two and was nearly killed