Vera Brittain died on 29 March 1970 in Wimbledon, London, at the age of 76, having spent her final decades as a prominent pacifist writer.
Vera Brittain died on 29 March 1970 at her home in Wimbledon, London, at the age of 76. In her final years, her health had declined, and she had increasingly withdrawn from public life, though she continued writing and corresponding until shortly before her death.
In accordance with her wishes, and reflecting her lifelong commitment to pacifism and her enduring grief for her brother Edward, who had been killed in Italy during the First World War and had no known grave, Brittain's ashes were scattered on his grave in Italy in 1970, fulfilling a promise she had made decades earlier.
Her death marked the passing of one of the twentieth century's most influential literary voices for peace and women's rights. Brittain's legacy endured through the continued popularity of Testament of Youth and her other works, through the Vera Brittain archive held at McMaster University in Canada, and through her daughter, the politician Shirley Williams, who carried forward aspects of her mother's public commitment to social causes. Brittain's unflinching documentation of the human costs of war continues to be taught and studied as essential reading in the fields of war literature, feminist history, and peace studies.