ABSTRACT
On Wednesday, July 9, 1947, Arthur C. Clarke picked up a pen, opened a school exercise book and began writing. Twenty days and four more notebooks later he had finished the initial draft of his first novel, Prelude to Space. This is not a case of Arthur C. Clarke venturing into the world of counterfactual history. Instead, he was recalling the very real events that took place in London on the devastating moonlit night of Saturday, May 10, 1941. The Churchill Arch was not the only instance of ‘scarred relics’ being put to a memorial function. They played a symbolic role throughout the ritual of rebuilding. The laying of the foundation stone in 1948, for example, featured a nineteenth-century mallet used during the construction of the Houses of Parliament plus a trowel, the handle of which was made from oak rescued from the bombing.
