In the last days of April and the first days of May the light of peace began to glow strangely on the familiar Britain of sirens and tin-hats, battledress and sandbags, stirrup-pumps and air-raid shelters. Its transmuted at a touch all such apparatus of recent survival into historical relics, at one with the medieval battlements of England's castles and the pikes and halberds in the Tower Armoury. Henceforward the British people would need tools of a different kind in order to hold their place among the nations; skills and spirit of a different kind too. Meanwhile they could listen to the final news reports of the fading war on "the Nine O'Clock" with pride as well as thankfulness.
- From The Pride and the Fall by Correlli Barnett
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