MAY 1940

Just finished SIX MINUTES IN MAY: How Churchill Unexpectedly Became Prime Minister'  by Nicholas Shakespeare.  Splendid prequel to John Lukacs' SIX DAYS IN LONDON, MAY 1940'.   Civilized politics at its most ruthless.

My Dad was 24 on the 7 May, 1940.  And we think we live in grim times.

THE MORNING PAPER

They who have known what the daily supply, the daily toil, the daily difficulty, the hourly danger, and the incessant tumult of a morning paper is, can alone know that chaos of the brain in which a man lives who has all this to undergo. Terror walks before him— fatigue bears him down—libels encompass him, and distraction attacks him on every side. He must be a literary man, and a commercial man; he must be a political man, and a theatrical man; and must run through all the changes from a pantomime to a prime minister. What every man is pursuing, he must be engaged in; and from the very nature and "front of his offence," he must be acquainted with all the wants, the weaknesses, and wickedness, from one end of London to the other. 

from 'Sporting Anecdotes' by Pierce Egan, 1807