The online museums you’ll never want to leave

‘We don’t talk about the war.’ Yet those of my generation and older reference it daily. The coronavirus is an unseen enemy but for every-one not in military service, so were our past enemies — Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia — invisible mainly because the mainland was never physically invaded by any of them, so the only sightings were on the newsreels. All we can see of the virus is that horrible furry ball with round-ended spikes sticking out of it, which is what it looks like under a microscope, but this is still a war, the same as any other.

We were not actually quarantined then but travel was both difficult and discouraged, and fierce men on posters asked: ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ We had food shortages, which continued in the form of rationing well after 1945. We were also encouraged to ‘Dig for victory’, of which I was reminded when trying to buy our usual French bean seeds this week.