We have just been watching this amazing two hour documentary from Channel Four about the Fire Storm that all but destroyed the City of London on the night of 29 December 1940.
I expect its viewing figures were miniscule; perhaps Jimmy and I were the only people under seventy, not connected with the programme, who watched it.
An extraordinary combination of eye-witness accounts, written testimony, and archive film footage from the Fire Brigade's Film Unit.
Reality TV, if you like, documenting the experiences of the voluntary firemen, those caught - and killed - in bomb shelters. Amazingly, the deaths were less than two hundred in that one night. And the lessons we learnt were later applied to the bombing of Dresden, now acknowledged as one of the most disgraceful episodes of the Second World War, when one hundred thousand people died in one night.
Very understated, no hysterical hyping up of emotions, just sparing story-telling, the impact greater for its calmness, for the constant soundtrack of roaring, aeroplane engines, incendiary bombs falling, fire roaring, and for the terrible beauty of the footage, the Dome of St Paul's illuminated by fires burning all around.
And the sheer futility. Lives ruined, the bereavements, the loss of livelihood, of home, the theft from people of their right to live in peace. We still bomb civilians, we still try and justify it for strategic means. It's barely news, it hardly scrapes the surface, our attention dims.
We study history to teach us about the present, and we study the present to learn about the past. But I'm not sure we ever learn anything.
