Footsteps are silent in the snow, you only hear the sniff-sniff as they pass. The silence and the snow, yet many people: it is almost uncanny; a sort of numb mingling, dream-death-like; and a touch of the medieval in the hoods that all the women and children wear. And men wearing knitted helmets like Norman chain mail.
— Adrian Bell, on a wartime trip, in Apple Acre.