My mother, Nancy Dowling, was back in Dublin (she had moved to England in the late 1920s) and staying with her sister in Buckingham St Buildings when the bombing occurred. She had given birth to my sister Anne, a few weeks earlier in the Rotunda. Three elder children were evacuees back in the north of England. My mother had left London to escape the Blitz and have her fourth child in relative peace. On the night in question she had gone to the pictures leaving her new-born child in the care of her sister. During the film she thought she had heard thunder outside but when she left the cinema she realised that the Luftwaffe had followed her to Dublin. She hurried back to Buckingham Street and was relieved to find that the bombs had fallen elsewhere. More than that she was relieved to discover that although the windows of the flat had been blown in the bottle of milk she had left cooling in a saucepan of cold water on the windowsill was still intact!
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