Quiet 75th birthday celebration for Shropshire VE Day baby Vicky

The retired Ellesmere Primary School headmistress, who was named Victoria to mark the liberation of Europe from Nazi Germany, was planning to spend the day in London, and visit Buckingham Palace where Winston Churchill delivered his famous victory address.

But social-distancing measures mean Vicky will instead spend the day with husband Reg at their home just outside Oswestry, tucking into a special cake and enjoying a glass of champagne or two.

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But the rules haven't stopped her from decking her house out with bunting, as she has done every year since the celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of VE Day in 1995.

Vicky said she would be chatting to her friends and family over the Whatsapp messaging service.

She joked that in his speech the the nation, Churchill declared "Never has there been a greater day than this" on the day that she was born.

Vicky, who was originally to have been called Anne after her aunt, said she was not very aware of the significance of the date of her birthday when she was growing up.

"I knew I had this unusual name because of the day I was born, it's quite normal now, but then it was a very unusual name," she said.

"I was always called Vicky, though, I wasn't aware my name was Victoria until I went to school, and then I had to learn to spell it. But I'm very proud of it now."

Vicky grew up on a farm in east Yorkshire. She moved to the Midlands after landing a place at Dudley Teacher Training College, and now lives just outside Oswestry.

She says she always takes time to think about the soldiers who gave their lives for her generation, and felt she had been very lucky to have been born at the end of the war.

"In the 1950s and 60s, everything just kept getting better and better, and I was able to take advantage of opportunities in education that weren't there before," she says.

"I often think about my parents working on the farm underneath the flightpath, with the bombers heading over them on their way to Hull."

Vicky has written a novel called It's Not A Boy, based on her life growing up on a farm in the years after the Second World War.