Forget about the comical bunglers of 'Dad’s Army' - this detailed evocation of wartime Brighton, preparing for German invasion, is the setting for an acerbic antidote to the plucky patriotism often trundled out in novels about the Home Front. Instead, this account of the prevailing paranoia, xenophobia and anti-semitism in certain classes of British society is at times shocking and challenging to some romanticised views of this period.