After Neville Chamberlain’s declaration of war on September 3, 1939, the air raid warning sirens screamed out, people were expecting to be bombed at any moment. Instead there was nothing. It came to be known as the 'Phoney War', a period of uncertainty and fear that lasted for months. Britain’s disastrous attempt to invade Norway led directly to Chamberlain’s fall and his replacement by Churchill, the architect of the Norwegian debacle. And then there was Dunkirk, one of the most extraordinary episodes of the war in which defeat was somehow turned into a victory by a government and a media desperate for some good news.