City of Destruction

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, Hackney Road, Tower Hamlets, E2

We see no white-winged angels now.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, Hackney Road, Tower Hamlets, E2

But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child’s.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, Hackney Road, Tower Hamlets, E2

From George Eliot’s Silas Marmer (1861)

Drunk for Ten Years

“Jesus,” he said to himself.

King Street, Southall, Ealing, UB2

“Drunk for ten years.”

From F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Lost Decade (1939)

An Entire City

As the bomb fell over Hiroshima and exploded, we saw an entire city disappear.

Hiroshimastrasse, Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany

I wrote in my log the words: “My God, what have we done?”

Captain Robert Lewis (1955)