Portsmouth anniversary in 2016. In literature, Portsmouth is the chief location for Jonathan Meades' 1993 novel "Pompey", in which it is inhabited largely by incestuous and necrophiliac criminals. Since the release of his novel, Meades has presented a TV programme documenting Victorian architecture in Portsmouth Dockyard. In Jane Austen's novel "Mansfield Park", Portsmouth is the hometown of the main character Fanny Price, and is the setting of most of the closing chapters of the novel. In Charles Dickens' novel "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby", main protagonists Nicholas and Smike make their way to Portsmouth and get involved in a
Portsmouth air raids which destroyed 6625 houses and severely damaged 6549 of them. The air raids caused 930 deaths and wounded almost 3000 people, many of them in the dockyard and military establishments. On the night of the city's heaviest raid on 10 January 1941, the Luftwaffe dropped 140 tonnes of high explosive bombs, killing 171 people and leaving 3000 homeless. Many of the city's houses were damaged and areas of Landport and Old Portsmouth destroyed, with the future site of Gunwharf Quays being razed to the ground. On the same night, the Guildhall was hit by an incendiary bomb which