Part I. One Night in the Lives of Five Writers : September 26, 1940 Newsreel 7 p.m. : Blackout 10 p.m. : Fire 1 a.m. : Rescue 6 a.m. : All Clear Part II. The Blitz : September 1940-May 1941 "War, she thought, was sex" "Ireland can be dementing" "How we shall survive this I don't know" "So much else is on the way to be lost" Part III. The Lull : June 1941-February 1944 " You are the ultimate of something" "Can pain and danger exist?" "Only at night I cry" "Alas, what hate everywhere" Part IV. Approaching Victory : June 1944-August 1945 "Droning things, mindlessly making for you" "A collective intoxication of happiness" "The days were listless and a flop" Part V. Surveying the Ruins : Postwar Europe, 1945-9 "The magic Irish light and the soft air" "Flying, no, leaping, into the centre of the mainland" "O, maybe we'll live a while in Killala" "The returning memory of a dream long forgotten" "The place I really did lose my heart to was Vienna" Part VI. Mid-century : Middle Age " We could have been happy for a lifetime" "Let us neither of us forget ... what reality feels like and eternity is" "The world my wilderness, its caves my home."
