Evening seeped into the streets with the persistent rain. By four-thirty, we’d drawn the blackout curtains tight. The grey world outside, grew darker as night squatted down over the village and the city below the hill. We shut it out, smothering the drone of planes. Later, no doubt, a siren’s scream would cut the foggy atmosphere. Colour would flame an ominous scarlet, as bombs hit the centre of the city and the docks. While searchlights cast white ribbons into the sky, the clacking Ack-Ack guns would puncture the night, again and again.

Inside, the lamplight cast a cozy glow across the dining room’s brown carpet, leather sofa and even over the faded velvet curtain covering the monstrous Morrison air-raid shelter, we used as a table. A couple of days before Christmas, after we’d eaten tea and listened to Children’s Hour, my mother, as usual, turned down the radio to a…