What is Their Finest Hour?
Their Finest Hour was a University of Oxford project, launched in July 2022 with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which aimed to empower families and local communities to share and digitally preserve their stories and objects relating to the Second World War.
How can I help?
By contributing stories and uploading photographs/scans of your letters, photographs and other objects relating to the Second World War, you can directly support the work of this project, and help to ensure that the memories of a wartime generation are not lost.
When and where will I be able to see my contribution online?
Their Finest Hour was a two year-project, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which officially ended on 31 July 2024. As a result, new submissions to the archive will only be reviewed and published in the archive intermittently.
Why now?
Very few families in Britain and the Commonwealth were untouched by the war but the stories and objects of the men, women, and children who were part of the 1939-1945 generation are being lost. 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 objects symbolise the sacrifices that the wartime generation made, and it is vital – for individuals, families, communities and the country as a whole – to preserve and value this heritage before it is lost to posterity.
