![]() As my own research has shown, those experiences often were different from the perception we usually have of everyone pulling together as one, with a communal mindset. This is not to denigrate the wars since that have taken place on foreign soil, but simply because WW2 was the last major conflict that my London family went through together, the memories of which have been passed on to future generations through their stories and anecdotes. Yet, during this strange period I’ve been reflecting on what it must have been like to live through the long years of the Second World War, which are only just still within living memory. No wonder our initial national response to this pandemic was (at worst) chaotic and (at best) mixed! What is needed now is often the exact opposite of that which was expected from the population eighty years ago. ![]() And as our current prime minister recently discovered to his cost, showing no fear in the face of this invisible fiend is neither heroic nor sensible. But it can almost be harder to deal with this unseen and unknown contagious enemy than one realised in flesh and blood. Military epithets abound to describe our present situation, putting many of us (regardless of our age) in mind of World War Two and the so-called ‘blitz spirit’. ![]() Hindsight can mess with history to a fatal degree, and we are lucky to have such passionately argued and reliably frank correctives as these. ![]()
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