大象传媒

I grew up in Swansea, high up above the town, two streets from where Dylan Thomas lived. When he talked about "an ugly lovely town and a spendidly curving shore", I knew just what he meant. What he saw, I saw. The German planes would swoop down over the roof of our house to bomb the town. my father was on duty as a Civil Defence warden in the dock area. My mother, my brother and myself were at home and we watched Swansea being destroyed. We lived in a three-storey house and on the second night we had incendary bombs in a bedroom. We had no electricity. On an open fire we tried to boil a kettle. My mother was normally a very dignified lady, but the bombs terrified her and I would give her sal volatile, a form of smelling salts. We were cold, hungrey and frightened.

My mother had been a concert pianist; she sat down in the dark and played Chopin and Mendelssohn for about half an hour. For a few minutes the war receded.My father came home, his face blackened, and very distressed. The raid was over and together we went outside and looked down on Swansea burning.

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