TELLING and often poignant insights into the happinesses, heartaches and hardships of Christmases in wartime Worcester are drawn here from the Evening News bound archives for the early 1940s.

I've been delving into these editions to compile this fascinating Memory Lane medley of stories from the war years.

They offer compelling glimpses of life back home amid all the major news items from the world's battlefronts of 1939 to 1945.