This is my 65th year, getting on a bit, but I was still born 9 years after the end of the Second World War. Whilst our nation has been involved in many conflicts during my lifetime, none of them have had a major impact on life in this country – although some terror attacks did come quite close while we were living in London. My mother told me a little of her recollections of the blitz – of one occasion when a stick of bombs was falling, each one getting closer, knowing that the next one would get her – but fortunately there wasn’t another one! My father never spoke about the war, other than to say that he was in a ‘reserved occupation’ and didn’t have to serve in the forces. It was only at his funeral that my brother and I learnt that he had been employed during the war years as an auditor hunting for ‘economic saboteurs’ – an account I shall now never be told in full.
Many, over the years, have been reticent to recount their war experiences, though fortunately a few have left us their stories in print, and there are many images which allow us a fuller picture. Today, of course, we see all too much of what is happening in conflicts around the world virtually as it happens. Such reporting shows us first hand what we have always really known – that war is a terrible thing in which there are no real winners, and where the only certainty is that there will be terrible suffering. This suffering is inflicted by all sides whether deliberately or by accident – wars create casualties – and wars are created by humanity.
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who had recently emigrated to the United States, Florence found work as an illustrator and formulated the idea for a children’s book. Stuck for a main character, her aunt, found an old battered black-face rag doll in the attic. “ I called him ‘Golliwogg’” The Adventures Of Two Dutch Dolls And A Golliwogg, was soon published.
