"Oh I was Very Lucky", London, 1944, 1979 (oil on board)

Creator: Thornycroft, Priscilla (1917-2020) A woman sits on a chair on the rubble of her bombed house - the only destroyed house in the street - after surviving the bombing of the Blitz, London, 1944. She sits smiling with a bandaged head, a cup of tea and a blanket. Priscilla Thorneycroft (also known as Priscilla Ann Siebert), did not have a commission or a permit to draw the scenes she observed - this painting of a woman sitting on a chair in the rubble after a Blitz raid was made decades later as part of a series of work based on her sketches and memories from the war. In 2013, she commented on this artwork: "An old lady from over the road, with a teapot, explained: 'She was in the basement when the bomb fell.' So I ran on to catch the evening train out of Waterloo Station, and as I ran I could still hear the woman repeating again and again: 'Oh I was very lucky.'"