Candlelit vigil held to mark 84 years since blitz

A candlelit vigil has been held to mark the 84th anniversary of a city's near destruction.

About 100 people gathered at a service in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral on Thursday evening to remember more than 550 people killed in an attack carried out by German bomber planes.

The air raid on on the night of 14 November 1940 was the single most concentrated attack on a British city in World War Two.

Kenneth Barber, only five-years-old at the time, recalled the sound of the bombs and guns as he spent 12 hours in a shelter in Spon Street.

"It started at half past five, quarter to six, the sirens went, and my mother said we've all got to go to the shelters, so we all went down Spon Street to the viaduct where the shelters was," Mr Barber said.

"Then we got in the shelters and then say from 6'oclock at night to six the following morning, all you could here was the... bombs and the guns blasting away merrily. And my mother said we can't go home."

The remembrance service at the cathedral, led by reverend John Witcombe, featured prayers and performances from choirs.

Phillip Budd, who was in attendance, was born on the night of the blitz.

"Well I was told that my father, who lived quite close to here, you could see the cathedral from our back bedroom window... He persuaded my mother to go to his sister's in Loughborough," he said.

"My father spent a night under the stairs."

Follow BBC Coventry & Warwickshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.