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| | Books | The time tunnel |
 | | After school, I would sneak off to a time machine - the public library, first floor reference, and to the bound volumes of the Times (the Manchester Guardian had no place in late 1950s Southampton society) and the Illustrated London News, and vanish inside their pasts. |
 | | The time machine lies to me, tells me that I am there, that, despite the insulated capsule, fleetingly I am in that past. |
 | | In 1940 Elizabeth Quayle was running the one telephone link between Portsmouth and Dunkirk and, as the German army closed in, she realised that the allied forces had no hope of escape; and six decades on in the Elephant and Castle, I realised that she was right. |
| books.guardian.co.uk /print/0,3858,4491547-99937,00.html (919 words) |
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