The Love-Charm of Bombs (70 page)

‘war time, with its’: ibid.

‘exuberance, during the early’:
EB, review of Angus Calder’s
The People’s War
(
The Mulberry Tree
).

‘saving resort’:
EB, preface to
The Demon Lover and Other Stories
(
The Mulberry Tree
).

‘By moonlight’:
William Sansom,
The Blitz: Westminster at War
(London: Faber, 2010),
p. 49.

‘most beautiful’:
RM to Jean Macaulay, 6 September 1940 (RM TC).

‘We at least’:
EB, review of
The People’s War
(
The Mulberry Tree
).

‘through the particular’:
EB, preface to
The Demon Lover and Other Stories
(
The Mulberry Tree
).

‘the only non-groupy’:
EB to William Plomer, 6 May 1958 (
The Mulberry Tree
).

‘imaginary but nevertheless’:
John Lehmann,
I Am My Brother
(London: Longmans, 1960),
pp. 169–73.

Newsreel

‘plywood under his skylight’:
see GG to VG, 30 August 1939 (VG Bod).

‘if necessary for years’:
Winston Churchill, speech, 18 June 1940,
War Speeches, 1939–45
, compiled by Charles Eade (London: Cassell & Co, 1951–2).

‘The prospect of invasion’:
HS, diary, 2 May 1940 (HS NLV).

‘German parachutists’:
see Juliet Gardiner,
Wartime: Britain 1939–1945
(London: Headline, 2005), p. 222.

‘1333 people’:
see Richard Overy,
The Battle of Britain: Myth and Reality
(London: Penguin, 2010), p. 83.

‘There are two corrections’:
J. B. Priestley, broadcast, 9 July 1940,
Britain Speaks
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940).

‘Why doesn’t he come?’: in William Shirer,
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
(London: The Folio Society, 1995), vol. 3, p. 170.

‘many-coloured flares’: J. B.
Priestley, broadcast, 4 September 1940,
Britain Speaks
.

‘the Führer has decided’: in Juliet Gardiner,
The Blitz: The British Under Attack
(London: HarperCollins 2011),
p. 7.

‘when the western skies’:
William
Sansom,
The Blitz: Westminster at War
(London: Faber, 2010),
p. 27.

‘I’ve fought fires’:
HY to Rosamond Lehmann, 11 September 1940 (RL KC).

‘I hear little by little’:
RM to Jean Macaulay, 8 September 1940 (RM TC).

‘Scraps of cloth’:
Virginia Woolf, diary, 10 September 1940,
The Diary of Virginia Woolf
, ed. Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew McNeillie (London: Hogarth Press, 1977–1984).

‘We have need of all’:
Virginia Woolf, diary, 18 September 1940 (
The Diary of Virginia Woolf
).

‘When your flat went’:
EB to Virginia Woolf, 5 January 1941,
The Mulberry Tree: Writings of Elizabeth Bowen
, ed. Hermione Lee (London: Vintage, 1999).

‘Hitler expects’:
Churchill, speech, 11 September 1940 (
War Speeches
).

‘momentous sound’: Sansom,
The Blitz
,
pp. 34–5.

‘less fearful in dealing with fire’: ibid., p. 24.

‘the quality of service’: J. B.
Priestley, broadcast, 10 September 1940 (
Britain Speaks
).

‘To work or think’:
EB,
HoD
,
ch. 5.

‘How fantastic life has’:
RM to Jean Macaulay, 11 September 1940 (RM TC).

‘out in the wide world’:
Sansom,
The Blitz
,
p. 49.

1:
7 p.m.: Blackout

‘Through the railings’:
EB, ‘London, 1940’,
The Mulberry Tree: Writings of Elizabeth Bowen
, ed. Hermione Lee (London: Vintage, 1999).

‘local authorities had decided’: see Westminster, CD114.

‘walking in the darkness’:
EB, preface to
The Demon Lover and Other Stories
(
The Mulberry Tree
).

‘casualties due to blackout’:
see Vera Brittain,
England’s Hour
(London: Continuum, 2005),
ch. 4.

‘new sense somewhere between’: ibid.

‘Greene was based’:
see GG,
Ways of Escape
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982),
ch. 4.

‘like a street in a city’:
EB to Noreen Butler, September 1940, in Victoria Glendinning,
Elizabeth Bowen
(London: Phoenix paperbacks, 1993), p. 133.

‘I had always placed’:
EB, ‘London, 1940’ (
The Mulberry Tree
).

‘200 cigarettes’: ibid.

‘as appalling a night’:
EB to Noreen Butler, September 1940 (in Glendinning,
Elizabeth Bowen
, p. 133).

‘after black-out we keep’:
EB, ‘London, 1940’ (
The Mulberry Tree
).

‘I do ap-p-pologise’:
see John Sutherland,
Stephen Spender: The Authorized Biography
(London: Penguin, 2005),
p. 271.

‘The sound of the Boche’:
EB to Noreen Butler, September 1940 (in Glendinning,
Elizabeth Bowen,
p. 133).

‘The very soil of the city’: EB,
HoD
, ch. 5.

‘twinship with one’s century’:
EB,
A Time in Rome
(London: Vintage, 2010),
ch. 3.

‘the fateful course’:
EB,
HoD
,
ch. 7.

‘a pink, rattled’: EB, ‘A Year I Remember – 1918’,
Listening In: Broadcasts, Speeches and Interviews by Elizabeth Bowen
, ed. Allan Hepburn (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010).

‘an impression of abounding’:
Rosamond Lehmann, letter correcting obituary of Elizabeth Bowen (RL KC).

‘Hers was a handsome face’:
May Sarton,
A World of Light
(New York: Norton, 1988),
p. 193.

‘It is possible that Elizabeth’s’:
EB,
B’s C
,
ch. 9.

‘a kind of protracted debauch’:
Malcolm Muggeridge,
Chronicles of Wasted Time
, vol. 2:
The Infernal Grove
(London: Collins, 1973), p. 104.

‘depressive when the bombs’:
GG, interview, 1975 in Henry Donaghy (ed.),
Conversations with Graham Greene
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992),
p. 95.

‘which Greene admired’:
see GG, ‘Lightning Tour’,
Spectator
, 13 June 1941.

‘the instant that an individual’:
John Strachey,
Post D, Some Experiences of an Air Raid Warden
(London: Gollancz, 1941), p. 18.

‘air raids were much less trying’:
EB, autobiographical note, 1948 (EB HRC).

‘we were a generation’:
ibid., ch. 2ii.

‘he dreamed that he was Wilfred Owen’: see GG,
A World of my Own: A Dream Diary
(London: Penguin, 1993),
p. 44.

‘we young writers’:
Christopher Isherwood,
Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties
(London: The Hogarth Press, 1938),
p. 74.

‘I can’t help wishing’:
GG to VG, undated (GG HRC).

‘Russian roulette’:
see GG, ‘The Revolver in the Corner Cupboard’,
The Lost Childhood and Other Essays
(London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1951).

‘expected for so long’:
GG, ‘At Home’,
Collected Essays
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970).

‘If war were only’:
GG, ‘One Man’s War’,
Spectator
, 6 December 1940.

‘faint susurrus of the’:
GG to VG, August 1939 (VG Bod).

‘suffer that word’:
GG,
Ways of Escape
,
ch. 3ii.

‘scientific formulae scrawled’:
Muggeridge,
The Infernal Grove
, p. 78.

‘high heartless buildings’:
GG, ‘Men at Work’,
Penguin New Writing
, 1942.

‘Greene tried to persuade Waugh’:
see Evelyn Waugh, diary, 28 May 1940,
The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh
, ed. Michael Davie (London: Phoenix, 2009).

‘the possibility of throwing stigmata’:
see Muggeridge,
The Infernal Grove
, p. 78.

‘there was something rather’:
ibid., p. 103.

‘for persons of courage’:
‘Air Raid Precautions Training Manual’ (Westminster, CD149.1).

‘a quite unnecessary’: Violet Bonham Carter, ‘Air-raid Wardens’ Claims’,
Spectator
, 8 November 1940.

‘mere cant’:
Strachey,
Post D
, p. 23.

‘Those who don’t like scratchy’:
EB, ‘Britain, 1940’,
People, Places, Things: Essays by Elizabeth Bowen
, ed. Allan Hepburn (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008).

‘We wardens were of all’:
EB, autobiographical note, 1948 (EB HRC).

‘instantly pop open’:
EB, draft typescript of
HoD
(EB HRC).

‘exchange of searching’:
EB, ‘Britain, 1940’ (
People, Places, Things
).

‘This is a people’s war’:
GG, ‘The Cinema’,
Spectator
, 29 September 1939.

‘unembittered humour’:
GG, ‘The Theatre’,
Spectator
, 1 November 1940.

‘heroic raconteur’:
GG,
Ways of Escape
,
ch. 4i.

‘as though the proximity’:
GG, interview in Marie-Françoise Allain,
The Other Man: Conversations with Graham Greene
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), p. 129.

‘Molly Hawthorn’:
GG,
‘The Londoners’,
The Month
, November 1951.

‘dragging, drumming, slowly’:
EB,
HoD
, ch. 5.

‘There is the distant drumfire’:
Harold Nicolson, diary, 24 September 1940,
Diaries and Letters 1939–45
, ed. Nigel Nicolson (London: Collins, 1967).

‘The incendiaries sounded’:
see Barbara Nixon,
Raiders Overhead, A Diary of the London Blitz
(London: Scolar Press, 1980), p. 35.

‘it was possible for one aeroplane’:
see ‘Air Raids: What you must know and what you must do’ (Westminster, CD175).

‘The Home Office had’:
see Mike Brown,
Put That Light Out! Britain’s Civil Defence Services at War 1939–1945
(Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1999), p. 88.

‘incendiaries could be regarded’:
see Strachey,
Post D
, p. 62.

‘there were a pair of skiing sticks’:
GG, ‘At Home’ (
Collected Essays
).

‘Of course we were painting’:
Inez Holden,
It was Different at the Time
(London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1943),
p. 69.

2:
10 p.m.: Fire

‘Eighty German aircraft’:
see Nat Arch, AIR 16/432.

‘Faith in tables’:
RM to Jean Macaulay, 23 September 1940 (RM TC).