As poetic as it is enlightening this detailed biography of five literary figures is achingly beautiful in its depiction of the disturbing everyday realities of war.

Part I. One Night in the Lives of Five Writers : September 26, 1940 -- Newsreel -- 7 p.m. : Blackout -- 10 p.m. : Fire -- 1 a.m. : Rescue -- 6 a.m. : All Clear -- Part II. The Blitz : September 1940-May 1941 -- "War, she thought, was sex" -- "Ireland can be dementing" -- "How we shall survive this I don't know" -- "So much else is on the way to be lost" -- Part III. The Lull : June 1941-February 1944 -- " You are the ultimate of something" -- "Can pain and danger exist?" -- "Only at night I cry" -- "Alas, what hate everywhere" -- Part IV. Approaching Victory : June 1944-August 1945 -- "Droning things, mindlessly making for you" -- "A collective intoxication of happiness" -- "The days were listless and a flop" -- Part V. Surveying the Ruins : Postwar Europe, 1945-9 -- "The magic Irish light and the soft air" -- "Flying, no, leaping, into the centre of the mainland" -- "O, maybe we'll live a while in Killala" -- "The returning memory of a dream long forgotten" -- "The place I really did lose my heart to was Vienna" -- Part VI. Mid-century : Middle Age -- " We could have been happy for a lifetime" -- "Let us neither of us forget ... what reality feels like and eternity is" -- "The world my wilderness, its caves my home."