* The Allies became a collective term for France, the USA, Russia (after 1941), China, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Malaya, the British West Indies, the colonies, mandates and protectorates. There were two and a half million Indians and 300-plus West Indians in Allied uniforms, with a Caribbean Regiment formed, very late in the day, in 1944. The main countries of the Axis were Germany and Austria, Italy, Japan, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Thailand.

* Anthony Wedgwood Benn was known to his family when young as ‘James’, and to friends and colleagues as Tony or Wedgie. In 1941 his father was made a Viscount and Tony’s older brother Michael became heir to the peerage.

^† As First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill lived at the Admiralty building, which he continued to occupy for several weeks. Chamberlain remained in the Cabinet.

* Field Marshal John Gort, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force in France (BEF).

^† Both were aides-de-camp to General Brooke. Barney Charlesworth was killed in an air crash in February 1945. Brooke described it as one of the worst personal blows of the war.

* Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour Party, was Lord Privy Seal in the Coalition government, Deputy Prime Minister, 1942–45; the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) was Field Marshal Sir John Dill.

* After the Dunkirk evacuation, the remaining British and Allied troops in France were withdrawn at Alan Brooke’s insistence.

* This was at the height of the Battle of Britain: Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding was Commander-in-Chief, Fighter Command (retired in November 1940) and Air Marshal Charles Portal, Commander-in-Chief, Bomber Command (Air Chief Marshal from October 1940).

* Virginia Woolf drowned herself on 28 March 1941.

* Tom Johnston was Secretary of State for Scotland during the war; Harry Hopkins was President Roosevelt’s special adviser, who passed most of January 1941 in the UK on a reconnaissance trip, spending much time with Churchill negotiating Lend-Lease. The Lend-Lease Bill passed through US Congress in March 1941 and authorised the President to sell or lease material to any anti-Axis country in return for any kind of direct or indirect payment. It gave the President huge discretionary powers: by September 1946 the British Empire Lend-Lease value was over $30 billion.

* On 22 June 1941, Germany had, without declaring war, invaded Russia, despite the German–Soviet non-aggression pact.

* Peter Pain was the barrister for the Fire Brigades Union and an auxiliary fireman.

^† The reference to Honolulu is to the Japanese assault on the US Pacific Fleet and airfields at Pearl Harbor, on the Pacific island of Oahu, on 7 December 1941, which put the entire American battleship force out of action. In a separate engagement, during an attempt by the Royal Navy to intercept a Japanese invasion fleet off Malaya, on 10 December, the Japanese Navy used bombers to sink two Royal Navy vessels.

* Malcolm Muggeridge spent a few months learning Portuguese, before going on to Mozambique.

^† From April to November 1941 Tobruk had been under siege by German and Italian forces, defended for most of the time by an Australian division. The port was vital to the Axis for supplies into North Africa.

* Peter Pears’s friend, Roger Burney, was British Liaison Officer on the Free French submarine Surcouf which in February 1942 went down with all hands somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle in circumstances that remain mysterious.

^† The first battle of El Alamein.

* Churchill and Roosevelt and their respective Chiefs of Staff met to consider, among other things, the future of the war in the Mediterranean and the High Command in North Africa.

^† Presumably a reference to the end of the battle of Stalingrad earlier in the month.

^‡ The night-time ‘Dambusters’ operation on the River Ruhr which resulted in the flooding of the German cities Dortmund and Kassel.

* In North Africa, the allied success of the second battle of El Alamein was followed by the surrender of German and Italian forces in mid-May 1943. The victory celebrations were attended by General Eisenhower.

* The President’s adviser and Charles Wilson were on confidential terms and Hopkins, who was present at the negotiations, reported back to Wilson.

* At the age of forty-three, Mountbatten was appointed Supreme Commander of the allied forces in South East Asia, over the heads of older and more senior colleagues, including the Commanders-in-Chief in the South East Asia Command, Admiral James Somerville, General George Giffard and Air Marshal Richard Peirse.

* Just over a year. Terry Deacon had been hit in the neck by a splinter during a practice shoot at Tidworth.

* Operation Overlord, which involved 6,500 vessels landing over 130,000 Allied forces on five Normandy beaches; 12,000 aircraft provided cover and bombed German targets. It became known as D-Day.

* The perception was that at the Yalta Conference, 4–11 February 1945, the second meeting of Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, Stalin was the victor, achieving the continued occupation of Eastern Poland, the extension of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe and the division of Germany and Berlin.

* Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945 and was replaced by Vice-President Harry Truman, who took his place at the ensuing post-war negotiations.

* Fearing capture by the encroaching Soviet Red Army, Hitler had in fact committed suicide on 30 April 1945, shooting himself with a revolver. His wife Eva (née Braun) also committed suicide with him by ingesting cyanide.

* Churchill took a holiday from 7 to 15 July 1945, accompanied by, among others, his Private Secretary John (Jock) Colville and his doctor Charles Wilson (by now ennobled as Lord Moran).

* David Margesson was a former Conservative Chief Whip and Secretary of State for War who was made a scapegoat for the fall of Singapore in 1942.

^† Alan Lascelles, Private Secretary to King George VI.

* Clement Attlee, Prime Minister; Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary; Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade; Herbert Morrison, Lord President of the Council; and A. V. Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty.

^† Atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945.