Club member Waterfield plans to publish history about London at war

Larry Waterfield, a 38-year member of the National Press Club, is looking forward to seeing his book, Metropolis at War: London, published in New York and London, Feb. 28.

"Here was terror on a grand scale," Waterfield wrote, explaining that we may live in the "age of terror" but in World War II, London, the biggest city in the world at the time, faced five years of terror bombing, terror rockets, the threat of invasion, occupation, starvation and a submarine blockade that cut off food and supplies.

The city struggled on, the huge newspapers printed, the movie studios made films, the BBC broadcast worldwide in dozens of languages, he said. The city was full of spies mostly working for Russia; life went on -- on a diet designed to promote prodigious amounts of flatulence.

Waterfield notes there is new information because key bits were kept secret until fairly recently: a plan to use poison gas, a plan to invade Ireland, a plan to keep India and the dire food situation.

The publisher is Austin Macauley Publishers.