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Quote by John Strachey

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Digging for Mrs. Miller: Some Experiences of an Air-Raid Warden

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John Strachey

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“On the surface, my novel The Vorbing is about vampires terrorising the village of Nocturne every night. The German Blitz on London in World War II. I was the real inspiration. I was fascinated by the idea of normality by day and then this evil, destructive power coming by night, and then the cycle repeating. I wanted to explore the kind of siege mentality that would create in a fantasy setting.”

“A lot of buildings were burnt out, others badly racked and unsafe, some completely smashed. Off the main road it was worse; here and there houses were being demolished, blasting going on sometimes, traffic being cleared, here a bridge being propped up, there a loudspeaker van telling people where to go for money or food. All windows gone everywhere... everywhere was the smell of plaster and burning, everywhere this incredible mess, everywhere people trailing about with a mattress or a bundle or a few pots and pans.”

“It was easy for complacent centuries like the Nineteenth, which knew no overwhelming disasters, to say that the Great Fire was a blessing because it swept out of existence a vast conglomeration of insanitary streets and made way for the cleaner brick-and-stone London of Stuart and later times; but we of to-day, who have seen so much that we loved go up in flames, are probably in a better position to feel sympathy for those of our forebears who suffered the tragedy of the Great Fire.”

“...carrying water to flush toilets and whoever could taking the prints and negs home to do at night if they happened to have the sacred combination of gas, electricity, and water, in fact we slept on the floor of the kitchen corridor and sometimes had ten or more friends, either bombed out of their own flats--or isolated by the presence of a time bomb--or just thinking that Hampstead [was safer].”

“If I can write, who possibly can’t. Even drawing a line in the sand is writing”