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.