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My brothers Vic, Len and I, in the care of our Irish childminder Breda, were treated to an evening at the Palais de Luxe cinema on Lime Street, Liverpool. ‘Edison the Man’ was the main feature, showing with ‘Our Gang’ starring our hero Spanky McFarlane. We three boys boarded the tram eagerly, unaware of the threat in the skies that night. Our mother saw us off with the warnings to get back safely, and to mind the air raid sirens should they go off.

Like many evacuees, we had been brought back to the cities from the countryside. Mum had broken-heartedly packed us off to Wales, and seized the chance for us to return to the family where we belonged, as we’d sat out the phoney war in distant Snowdonia. Back in Lodge lane, Liverpool, the nights were getting fiercer, the radio news more worrying, but a routine had returned.

That May night, as we watched our heroes on the screen, the bombs rained down on Liverpool. Sirens rang out and we could feel the vibration through our seats as German bombs smashed through the nearby Lewis’s building. The cinema manager addressed us from the front of the screen, explaining gravely that we were to remain in the cinema for our own safety. As he spoke, the sound of crashing masonry and the wail of sirens and alarms threatened to drown him out. He raised his voice “And we will replay our film for the enjoyment of our young audience” which delighted my brothers and me.

The captive audience tossed and turned all night in their seats, variously dozing and whispering anxiously as the film replayed itself over and over to the sound of the bombardment outside. By dawn, the crumpled cinema goers stepped out cautiously into the destruction of the flattened city centre, survivors of the May blitz. All had gone quiet; the skyline had been brought down to our feet, the tall shops and offices collapsed into rocks and rubble. With alarm, we noticed bodies lying in pieces, but realised they were the models from Burton’s the tailors shop window. We made our way home through the thick dusty air, where our mother ran from the garden gate to embrace us, convinced we had returned from the dead.

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