Victoria and Albert Toft

Splendid surprise this morning to see that Leamington's statue of Queen Victoria has been scrubbed to dazzling whiteness. Hurrah!

The monumental figure of the Queen Empress is the work of Albert Toft, a Midlands-born artist who seems to have specialised in memorials.

Just down the street is another Toft figure, a lone rifleman, atop the town's war memorial.

One of his biggest commissions was to create the four large bronze figures that circle Birmingham's principal war memorial, the Hall of Memory.

Very much of their time, the impressively idealised figures represent in turn the Army (above), Navy, Air Force and Women's Services.

I'm intrigued that so many of the memorials created in the aftermath of WW1 are deliberately, one mights say emphatically, secular in character.

Back to Leamington. A plaque reveals the Queen Victoria was stirred, but not shaken, by the air raid of 14 November 1940.

On the same night, the raid on nearby Coventry continued for ten hours, causing massive destruction and taking the lives of 568 civilians.

Fortunes of war

One of many Red Cross 'letter forms' via which my mother kept up contact with family members in the German-occupied Channel Islands.

So glad to hear all well. Recovered from sad loss of our dear ones. We have adopted Ann. See Marsie daily. All love and thoughts.

Keeping exactly to her ration of twenty-five words, she sketches in as much as she can to reassure her aunt Clementine of the well-being of her niece (Ann) and sister (Marsie).

The 'sad loss' refers to the Exeter blitz of May 1942, during which my mother's home received a direct hit. Four members of the household were killed, including Clementine's sister Kath, as well as her niece and great-niece.

My mother and her first husband adopted Kath's daughter Ann.

For me, the enforced brevity of these messages, combined with the absence of specifics (see below), only serve to increase their poignancy.

Home front

My mother, daringly be-trousered, doing her bit on the 'home front' in the early 1940s.

She's in the garden of the home in Exeter, Devon, that she shared with her first husband.

Several family members moved in 'for the duration', evacuated from other parts of the country.

During the Exeter blitz of 1942, the house received a direct hit.

Four people were killed: my great-aunt Kath, my cousin's wife Olive and her daughter Faye - and a non-family member, a young evacuee.