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Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIX, Issue 21959, 10 May 1941, Page 4

When Dr Johnson wrote prophetically of flytog-machtaes in Rasselas he can hardly have forseen that on a winter night less than two hundred years later a bomb dropped from the skies would wreck his house to Gough Square. Today the walls are still standing, but the roof has gone and the famous garret in which he tolled at the Dictionary has been burnt out. The Memorial House, off Fleet Street, was one of the best-known literary landmarks in London, and its destruction will dismay and anger Johnson-lovera to all parts of the world. Luckily there was only one piece of Johnsonian furniture to the house—the chair he used at the Cock Tavern—and- that has been saved, along with several first editions, including one of the Dictionary. The chair was on the ground fioor and the books in the basement. Miss B. P. Rowell, daughter of the curator, has said to an interview that it may be possible to renovate the interior of the building.