The love-charm of bombs: restless lives in the Second World War

Part I. One Night in the Lives of Five Writers : September 26, 1940

Newsreel

7 p.m. : Blackout

10 p.m. : Fire

1 a.m. : Rescue

6 a.m. : All Clear

Part II. The Blitz : September 1940-May 1941

"War, she thought, was sex"

"Ireland can be dementing"

"How we shall survive this I don't know"

"So much else is on the way to be lost"

Part III. The Lull : June 1941-February 1944

" You are the ultimate of something"

"Can pain and danger exist?"

"Only at night I cry"

"Alas, what hate everywhere"

Part IV. Approaching Victory : June 1944-August 1945

"Droning things, mindlessly making for you"

"A collective intoxication of happiness"

"The days were listless and a flop"

Part V. Surveying the Ruins : Postwar Europe, 1945-9

"The magic Irish light and the soft air"

"Flying, no, leaping, into the centre of the mainland"

"O, maybe we'll live a while in Killala"

"The returning memory of a dream long forgotten"

"The place I really did lose my heart to was Vienna"

Part VI. Mid-century : Middle Age

" We could have been happy for a lifetime"

"Let us neither of us forget ... what reality feels like and eternity is"

"The world my wilderness, its caves my home."