One of Michael Smurfit’s earliest memories occurred just seven miles from Liverpool in the early 1940s where he lived as a young boy for a period. The city was under aerial assault, and even now, Smurfit can recall  sheltering in a cramped Morrison shelter during 1940 and 1941. “The German bombing raids were terrifying… There would be 500 bombers attacking the city and the shrapnel flying into the sky to try and stop them was an unbelievable sight,” he recalled in his 2014 autobiography A Life Worth Living. He remembers “crying uncontrollably” when his baby sister Ann died of convulsions…

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