The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Wednesday 16 September 2009
Editing changes aimed at improving an unclear sentence resulted in our saying that Vera Lynn's recent No 1 made her the only artist to feature in the UK charts in the 20th and 21st centuries. What we were trying to say was: she is the only one to have spanned the charts from their inception in the early 50s to the 21st century.
It was the year food rationing officially ended in the UK and Elvis began his music career that the Forces' Sweetheart, Dame Vera Lynn, last topped the charts.
But 55 years later, at the age of 92, she has done it again, hitting No 1 in the album charts last night with her offering We'll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn and usurping Bob Dylan, 68, as the oldest artist to grace the top spot.
Her album fought off stiff competition from the Beatles, who occupied the 5th, 6th, 9th, 10th, 21st, 24th, 29th, 31st, 33rd, 37th and 38th spots after digitally remastered versions of the band's albums went on sale along with an interactive video game that induced a brief return to "Beatlemania".
Lynn, pictured above in 1940, even beat Arctic Monkeys, whose lead singer, Alex Turner, was voted NME's "coolest person on the planet in 2005 and who last month headlined the Reading and Leeds festival. Other contenders were Jamie T and the Kings of Leon, according to the Official Charts Company. Lynn said: "I am extremely surprised and delighted, and a big thank you to all my fans for putting me there."
It is 70 years to the month since Lynn, then 22, first recorded We'll Meet Again, which became a symbolic song of the second world war. She then went on to have the first record by a British performer to top the US charts with Auf Wiedersehen, Sweetheart in 1952.
A good friend of the Queen Mother, her last public performance was in Buckingham Palace in 1995 for a ceremony to mark the golden jubilee of VE Day. This year, Lynn was back in the news for suing the British National party for using White Cliffs of Dover on an anti-immigration album without her permission. Last night's No 1 made her the only artist to feature in the UK single and album charts in the 20th and 21st centuries.