For those of us who lead lives of quiet desperation this book puts matters into perspective. The journalist Peter Zimonjic was on one of the three Tube trains – a bus was also blown up – bombed on 7 July 2005. This is not one of those pornographic accounts of horrible events, but a minute-by-minute report of what happens when a powerful bomb explodes in a crowded Tube train during rush hour. 

Usually, it is only soldiers and battlefield reporters who experience this kind of thing: most of the passengers, like Zimonjic, had not been trained and disciplined into acting well or efficiently under blood-curdling pressure. Almost no one thought that a bomb was responsible for the smoke, noise and occasional alarm