From Diary of E. M. Forster, 8 September 1940: 'London Burning! I watched this event from my Chiswick flat last night with disgust and indignation, but with no intensity though the spectacle was superb, I thought It is nothing like the burning of Troy. Yet the Surrey Docks were ablaze, at the back with towers and spires outlines [sic] against them, greenish yellow searchlights swept the sky in futile agony [...] Now and then tracts of the horizon flashed a ghastly electric green. Or the fire ahead burst up as I hoped it was dying down. "Oh!" I cried once faintly, then returned to my bed and read Middlemarch.'