A FORMER nanny who twice fled from the Nazis during the Second World War has celebrated her 100th birthday with her family.

Dorothy Blackmore marked the milestone with a party at Hambleton Grange care home, in Thirsk, where she moved to in January after living in Aysgarth in Newby, Cleveland for 46 years.

Mrs Blackmore who was born in Maltby, near Thornaby, months after the outbreak of the First World War, trained as a children's nurse and emigrated to Canada aged 17 to work as a nanny for the governor of Nova Scotia.

She said after returning to the UK in 1936 she did not settle, so she tossed a coin to decide if she should go east or west - and ended up in Cairo, Egypt, where she met and her husband, Tom, who was in the Army.

During the war years she was first evacuated to Jerusalem, where she had her first son, Douglas, in a museum, before being evacuated to Durban, South Africa where she stayed until 1944.

Mrs Blackmore, who has two sons, five grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren, was then evacuated a second time to Durban, South Africa where she stayed until 1944.

Her family moved to Newby in 1957 to look after her father and stepmother, and she became a founding member of the village's Women's Institute and was a committee member for the village hall.