Barrack Room

January 1942: In the centre of the hut the roaring stove glows red to the first joint in the chimney pipe. The hut is crowded with beds, blankets, people, piles of kit over which people step hazardously if they want to move about. This is the moment of the day when life becomes worth living. From being separate closed-in units of man power, numbed with cold and wet and fatigued, we extend into a warm argumentative contented scrum.... a spontaneous ever-changing ebb and flow of life laps round the warm centre of the stove; toast-making, water boiling, coffee brewing, boot cleaning, dubbin melting, clothes drying. All our hopes and anxieties are momentarily forgotten - the forces that bought us here, the reason that will draw us apart. (K. Vaughan, Journal and Drawings 1939-1965, Alan Ross, 1966, p. 50.)

We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings for his assistance in cataloguing the present lot and lots 18-21, 25 and 26. His new book, Keith Vaughan: The Photographs has recently been published by Pagham Press.