I can quote the final sentences of this novel without revealing anything about how the story ends, and I think they are worth quoting because they encapsulate much of what this excellent book is about: "Whole streets and lanes were disappearing, their names remembered only by word of mouth, or in the forgotten folds of disused maps. These brief candles. They were blowing out their own past … But maybe he'd got that wrong. Maybe you couldn't destroy history. You could only add to it."

These are the closing thoughts of Edward Baines, the central character, an architectural historian living in Liverpool who, when war breaks out in 1939, has been engaged for some time on a book about the buildings of his home city. The outbreak of war and the threat of what may be lost if, as expected, the city becomes a bombing target, finally prompts Baines to press on with gathering his material, and the phoney war gives him the time he needs to get the job done before the bombs start to fall. To speed the process he switches from sketching the buildings to capturing them on camera. Fatefully, this brings him into contact with a photographer who saw action in the trenches in the 1914-18 war, and with his wife, a one time art student with such daring modern ways as a tendency to wear trousers. It is also through contact with the photographer that thirty eight year old Baines ends up contributing to the war effort by joining one of the teams set up to rescue people from bombed buildings, rather than through military service.

The "history" referred to in the closing lines goes beyond the historic buildings of Liverpool. The past is present in this novel in a number of ways. At the same time as researching his book, Baines is also reading the journals of an architect active in the city in the 1860s, a character whose own story features almost as prominently here as the main 1940s plot. History is also present in Baines's own past. The novel explores how being orphaned as a child and then witnessing the tragic death of a close friend may have contributed to his own failure to do much with his life until the war came along.

Room is also found to show how his war work brings the main character closer than ever before to the ordinary working men of his home town, to touch on attitudes towards the port held by southerners, and to foreshadow the city's post-ware decline.

My only real gripe is with the somewhat compressed font used for the extensive quotations from the journals of Eames, the fictional 1860s architect. (I think it was Bookman Old Style but don't quote me on that.) I didn't find this font very easy on the eye, and did not think that its "old" look was necessary to remind the reader that this was an extract from a nineteenth century journal which would in any case have been hand written. That I read-on regardless is further evidence of the quality content that made the small effort worthwhile. ( )