Jacquetta Hawkes, in Prehistoric Britain by jc & Hawkes (1943)

At first it seemed absurd to settle down while civilisation rocked to write of its prehistory. Or with the present painful and the future uncertain, was it perhaps only good sense to escape into the past? Then another justification came into my mind – that prehistory was coming to life. There had been a sudden probability that events long consigned to the remote past might be re-enacted and involve oneself… prehistorians had spent much learning and ingenuity on reconstructing thousand-year-old stories of continental invasions of Britain. In 1940 we awaited a practical demonstration in modern form.