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I was born in 1935, so I was quite young when the war started. I remember we were in Bath, and it was 1942. We went down into the cellar of our house, and when we came up, I remember seeing all the glass on the floor where all the windows had been shaken out by the bombs.

One might have thought that 70 years was time enough to work out what really happened in 1939. It isn't the case. Misunderstandings and misinformation abound.

Even post-WWII, nobody talked about the Holocaust. It wasn't until the '50s that people started talking about it.

Today we know that World War II began not in 1939 or 1941 but in the 1920's and 1930's when those who should have known better persuaded themselves that they were not their brother's keeper.

I remember the 1940s as a time when we were united in a way known only to that generation. We belonged to a common cause-the war.

But in 1941, on December 8th, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, my mother bought a radio and we listened to the war news. We'd not had a radio up to that time. I was born in 1934, so I was seven years of age.

Unfortunately I put the opening date on the 5th of December 1941 and on the 7th of December the Japanese bombarded Pearl Harbour. My dream of a theater in Washington D.C. came to a prompt end.

We have in our heads a pretty well-defined narrative of the First World War, and there are certain events that are obviously key.

I was four years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941 by Japan, and overnight, the world was plunged into a world war. America suddenly was swept up by hysteria.