Singer and actress Cynthia Morey lived in Leamington from 1940 to 1949, where she attended Leamington Girls' College and saw the effects of the Coventry Blitz.

After writing a series of memoirs of her life as a performer, Miss Morey came across a stash of exercise books and a diary from her childhood.

They are included in her new book Dark is the Dawn, which she says tells the story of an ordinary family.

Born in Portsmouth in 1927, Cynthia Morey spent her early years in the south of England and London. The family endured bombing in Croydon in 1939 and 1940, before her father's job moved to Birmingham, and the family had a flat in the Parade.

She said: "It was extraordinary really, because Croydon was a very ordinary town that had grown up almost into a city.

"Moving to Leamington, with the Parade and all the wide streets was lovely, although it got very shabby as the war went on."

Her early memories are of wonderful gardens and a town full of flowers, but the war took its toll. The railings disappeared from around many of the buildings, nothing was painted and the stucco began to crumble.

Miss Morey's father had hoped Leamington would escape the bombing, but the family watched the attack on Coventry.

She said: "The sky was brilliant red, and people were pouring into Leamington. I remember calling out to someone, saying what's going on, where is it?"

The book also includes recollections of school and the subjects girls studied in those days. There was tragedy for the family. Her older brother was killed flying with the RAF in 1942 when his plane crashed in fog.

Nonetheless she still has fond memories.

Miss Morey said: "I'm not altogether sorry to have lived through it because people were so wonderful. The cameraderie was astonishing."

Miss Morey went to the Royal College of Music in 1949, after Warwickshire County Council awarded her a scholarship. She stayed on for two years, before auditioning for the D'Oyley Carte Opera Company. From there she went to Sadler's Wells and the English National Opera, and sang in West End musicals such as Fiddler on the Roof, Me and My Girl and My Fair Lady.

Dark is the Dawn is published by Paragon Publishing and costs £14.99.