Forces' Sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn has become the patron of the Dover War Memorial Project.

Project organiser Marilyn Stephenson-Knight said the news was “absolutely marvellous”.

“How wonderful is that!” she said. “It’s a terrific honour, and absolutely marvellous that she should be associated with the memory of our Dover Fallen in this way.

“Dame Vera is such an icon of the Second World War and raised the morale and the spirits of millions. With her legendary song The White Cliffs of Dover she’ll be forever associated with our home town too.”

Dame Vera, who is 93, began her career when she was seven in 1924, the year that Dover war memorial was unveiled.

“Quite a few people have told us how much she meant during the war years and forever afterwards,” said Ms Stephenson-Knight.

“One told me that his mother always became very emotional when she heard the song, because it contains the lines 'And Jimmy will go to sleep in his own little room again'.

“She lost her much-loved brother James in the war, in Egypt and he has no known grave. So her Jimmy never could come home again to his own room.

“So for him, and all the other Fallen from our town who never saw the white cliffs of home again, it’s so moving that Dame Vera has become the patron of the project, and in their memory has perhaps brought the white cliffs to them.”

For more information visit the project's website here.