I have a sizeable library of books about the war, memoirs of those years, and I did not at once work out which story to recall today

I have a sizeable library of books about the war, memoirs of those years, and I did not at once work out which story to recall today. All of them are heavy and grievous. But one cannot brush such horrors aside. If you have to read a single book about the war, it may be the Blockade Book. Terrible, terrible, terrible, and yet it holds so much of human beauty, nobility, soul and warmth, which, through death, suffering, degradation and dehumanisation, brought life back into hearts, and faith in the better, in oneself, in goodness. I sometimes open it at a random page and grieve, and then all the same there is a happy ending: here they are, these people, alive, with their own stories...