h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My mother was born and brought up in Coventry and, at the outbreak of the Second World War, she was teaching in the city. She was involved in helping the evacuation of the city's children to the countryside but most of them had returned by the time the bombing started.

My father was an electrical engineer, working as an inspector in an armaments factory in the city. Both of them were in the city on the night of 14th November 1940. They never told me what it was like to be there, but wave after wave of German bombers flew over, dropping both high explosive bombs and incendiary bombs. At the end of that night the city centre had been destroyed. My parents married in December, although they had difficulty finding a church with a roof on.

When I grew up, Coventry was still being rebuilt. My mother said that I was afraid of cranes and, one day when she had arranged to meet my father, it was difficult to get me to walk across the city, because there were so many cranes. I have a memory of visiting the new cathedral soon after it had been finished. I had an impression of an aisle flanked with crown of thorn motifs, stained glass windows set in angles along the walls and a great tapestry of Christ above the altar. Maybe the ruins of the old cathedral are more moving, as they have been left as a symbol of the sorrow of war and the potential of reconciliation.

Until the war, the symbol of Coventry was an elephant and castle but it was replaced by the phoenix.

[Amy P]

Deb

I'm reading "Blackout," a science fiction novel set among Oxford history students in 2060. Time machines allow them to go back to crucial times and places in the past. Many of them choose events like the rescue at Dunkirk and the evacuation of children to the countryside. What they are forbidden to do is visit "divergent" sites, where their actions might change history.

The book has a sequel, called "All Clear."

So where is the drama of the novel if the students can't change anything?

Apparently things don't turn out as expected. Did the researchers get it right, or did contemps falsify things to deceive the Germans?