Butchers Row, Coventry, circa 1890

When I was a lad, my father gave me a book about the S.O.E. (special operations executive) in WWII a section of which dealt with the Enigma machine and the code breakers of Bletchley Park. The book explained that we (the British) were actually accurately deciphering German military codes as early as 1941 and further explained that one of Winston Churchill's hardest decisions was a decision to put up no defence to the extensive bombing by the Germans of Leicester and Coventry as to do so would have alerted the Germans that we were reading their codes and would have jeopardised the planned outcome of the war.

Years later I came across an old photograph from a glass plate negative and realised that this was one of the areas referred to in this story. I was compelled to create this drawing of it, which was no easy task as I had to find a number of different reproductions taken from the original glass negative in order to piece together the detail which was not present as a whole in any of the reproductions themselves.

High Quality Limited Edition Artist Reproductions of my pen and ink drawing are available and can be found by visiting "http://www.thepainterscollection.com".