Stella and fellow Londoners experience ‘nothing more than a sort of grinding change of gear for the up-grade’ as they start their 1943 calendars. But in fact there was still news coming in from North Africa. The Eighth Army captured Tripoli on 23 January and continued their march towards Tunisia. And sporadic bombing began again in London. On 18 January Hilde Spiel reported the first raids for two years in her diary. ‘First made me very nervous, mostly because of Christine. Second 5am excited me less!’ Three days later she complained that the ‘beastly Luftwaffe’ had bombed a school in Catford, south London, and killed about forty small children. ‘Heartrending.’ Hilde was already feeling hysterical and on edge because she was in the final month of a difficult pregnancy. She had been operated on the previous March, and told to avoid becoming pregnant in the near future. It became clear that she should have heeded this advice when, four months pregnant in September, she suffered a small heart and breathing attack.
What do You think about The Love-Charm Of Bombs (2013)?
