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I grew up in Cardiff and my earliest memory of those days was the night Cardiff was bombed in 1940 or ’41. I remember being woken by my mother and looking out of my own bedroom window and seeing silhouettes of nearby houses and beyond that, this extraordinary red glow in the sky. It was the sight of Cardiff docks after being bombed with a huge drop of incendiary bombs. Soon after that, we were all taken from the house into the neighbourhood Anderson shelter and were tucked into little beds, which we all hated because they always smelt so dank.

That same night was the night that Llandaff Cathedral was bombed. The main steeple and the knave of the church were hit. It was completely destroyed. One huge bomb landed in the graveyard and large chunks of gravestone were hurled many hundreds of yards into the air, some landing and damaging houses nearby.

After that, all of us young children were sent away for the next couple of years of the war. I myself was sent to Yorkshire where I had a very peaceful life doing simple tasks like helping with potato picking and learning to speak with a Yorkshire accent!

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