Amazon.com description: Product Description: PROLOGUE T A THEN the idea of this book first came to VVme in the summer of 1940, my purpose was to make it a wartime variety of Priestleys English Journey. At that time the Battle for Britain was only beginning, and the Battle for London still several weeks ahead. With the intention of travelling round the country and collecting impressions, I made plans for a series of journeys to distant parts of this island. But when the Battle for Britain intensified, and the Battle for London assumed characteristics which few of us had pictured before they appeared, the difficulties of travel combined with the time limit necessarily imposed upon a topical book made the projected long journeys impossible. Moreover, with each day that passed, it became clear that the worlds eyes were concentrated on London and such travels as I was able to undertake seemed to show that a tour of the more remote areas of the country would result largely in impressions of places which, compared with the dramatic events in London and the South, would differ little from similar impressions in peacetime.1 1 Note.This book had gone to the printers before the severe series of provincial airraids which started in the latter half of November had Being a Londoner by adoption, I happened to be in a position to describe those dramatic events. Finally I decided that a book recording the experiences shared by the millions of civilians living in or near London, would convey at least as vivid an impression of Englands hour as an indeterminate tour of districts many miles from the principal battlefield. Hence my object has not been to seek out, like a Special Corres pondent, aerial contests, naval catastrophies, domestic tragedies and other Front Page stories, but to present, from several different angles, this wartime life as it has appeared to the ordinary London civilian day by day. In writing, in more than one book, of the last Great War, I was in the position, owing to the lapse of time, of an artist who is able to view a vast landscape in distant perspective. Someday, perhaps, this second great war period of my life may be susceptible ,to treatment in similar fashion but the present book, written not only during the war but in the midst of it, has had to forgo the advantages of judgment and comparison which a wide perspective con fers. Nevertheless, certain outstanding differ begun, I am, of course also aware that long before the war came to London, many towns and cities in the NorthEast, SouthEast and SouthWest had experienced continuous aerial bombardment. I had intended to visit all these areas, but lack of time, combined with the personal problems created for me by the bombardment of London, compelled me, to my regret, to abandon this more comprehensive scheme,