We went back to Croydon, our home, the place where I was born, sometime before the end of the war. I think it must have been in late 1943 or 44.

I remember everything about the house feeling strange and yet familiar – I had no real memories, only a sense of familiarity, of deja vu, if you like, as of course I had been there for my earliest years. I also remember that there was no room in the kitchen for the Morrison shelter and it was kept in the garage. In theory, we were supposed to go out and crawl under its iron roof whenever the siren sounded, but in practice we never did. The space underneath it gradually filled up with garden tools and onions and dusty dahlia bulbs throughout that last year of the war.

For daytime air raids, my parents would take us to a bit of the house that my father said was structurally the strongest, a small area between the kitchen and the hall. Since he was an engineer and had commissioned and supervised every girder and brick of the house, he was probably right.

My parents had moved into it with John, my brother, while the workmen were finishing it and just in time for me to be born there in September 1937. Now, we had returned. My parents probably had little choice. We had gone to Swansea because my father was Professor of Electrical Engineering at London University and his faculty had been transferred to Swansea. Now it had been moved back.

When the siren sounded its dreadful wail at night, Mummy and Daddy would take us into their own bed. I hated this because their breath smelt. I think it was the fear again. There was an irregular mark on the ceiling that looked like a porcupine with a human head and a top hat. I hated it too. I thought it would come down and get me in my sleep.

The air raids were very frequent. I imagine my parents had decided, fatalistically, that it was impossible to traipse up and downstairs all the time and felt that what mattered most was that we would all go together. Croydon Airport had been a prime target earlier, but now the bombs were mostly dropped by German aircraft being chased from London and lightening their load.

Right over Croydon. They probably knew that Daddy had fought them in the First World War and were getting their own back.

When the V1 and V2 rockets came, we did not go downstairs, even at night. With them, you heard the whining, droning, metal sound get nearer and nearer then cut out in unbearable silence until you heard the impact. One fell less than a mile away and the house shook, but it was alright because the tension went when you heard the blast; you knew you were still alive.

I just knew that smelling my parents’ fear was still worse than anything I could fear myself. The rise of the ‘All Clear’ siren should have been a relief but it was as horrible to me as the Air Raid Warning one. In old age, all these years on, I still feel physically sick when I hear either of them.