Peter Gregory, of Lund Humphries, and Edward Sackville-West proposed to publish a series of illustrated poems for a planned quarterly magazine, The Arts. In October 1945, at their request, the poet and critic Herbert Read, who wrote the first monograph on the artist's work published in 1934, sent Moore his poem entitled '1945':

They came running over the perilous sands

Children with their golden eyes

Crying: Look! We have found samphire

Holding out their bone-ridden hands.

It might have been the spittle of wrens

Or the silver nest of a squirrel

For I was invested with the darkness

Of an ancient quarrel whose omens

Lay scatter'd on the silted beach.

The children came running towards me

But I saw only the waves behind them

Cold, salt and disastrous

Lift their black banners and break

Endlessly, without resurrection.

In June 1946 – after being asked by Gregory to 'apply pressure' to Moore for the illustration – Read wrote again enclosing a sketch indicating 'dark clouds, text, cliffs, waves, figures fleeing over sands, some wreckage etc lying about', which Moore adopted for at least twenty-six drawings reminiscent of the Kentish coast close to where he had lived. Barbed wire, iron railings and other obstructions, including landmines, were placed on these beaches during wartime, making them 'perilous' indeed.