When Marguerite Steen submitted the manuscript of this vivid and atmospheric novel about London in the Blitz, it was considered too frightening for a British readership. So it was sent to Viking in the US and Macmillan in Canada, where readers were obviously made of sterner stuff. The British censor actually made 3 small deletions, and Steen’s editors decided to indicate where these censored passages had been, a device I initially thought was a clever stylistic trick, but which became even more effective when I learnt that it was actual censorship at work. I found this a gripping narrative and one that conveyed the atmosphere of wartime London brilliantly. Steen wrote her novel in 1941 whilst the events she describes were actually taking place, and this gives a visceral and quite frightening edge to it. Louise and her husband Jos are the main characters, Louise searching for something worthwhile to do for the war effort, and Jos a volunteer in the Auxiliary Fire Service. From a middle class background they are forced to rub shoulders with people from all walks of life as they cower in the bomb shelters or work to extinguish fires – war is no respecter of class. Interspersed with the narrative chapters are “West End Newsreels” – snapshots and vignettes of what’s happening all around, narrated in multiple voices, rather like a Greek chorus. Not only did this strike me as a truly modernist device, but these interludes cleverly conveyed the details of daily life, a social panorama of London at war, with a film-like accuracy. All in all, this is an excellent wartime novel and one which deserves to be better known.