The way we were

On the evening of July 28, 1948, Britain’s Prime Minister Clement Attlee welcomed the thousands of Olympic athletes, who had congregated in London, with a warm but candid address on BBC radio.

The Labour leader spoke of the two world wars which had devastated so many lives and countries since the English capital had last held the Games 40 years previously and of the scars of battle still evident in the mounds of bombed rubble that dotted the city.

Rationing was still in place, to an extent unknown even during World War II, and Attlee admitted that the lack of everyday commodities such as food, fuel and clothing — not to mention money — had prevented them from doing all they would have wished.