A wartime bomb victim was shocked to see the face of the man who nearly killed him staring back from the pages of his library book.

But Ronald Carr, 74, says it has allowed him to finally forgive the German pilot responsible for Brighton's worst wartime atrocity.

Mr Carr, of Carden Avenue, Brighton, was watching a film at the Odeon Cinema in Kemp Town when it was bombed on September 14, 1940.

More than 50 people, many of them children, were killed and 14-year-old Ronald suffered shrapnel wounds to his stomach.

Since then Mr Carr has felt bitterness towards the pilot who dropped the bomb.

But he says he has come to terms with his memories more than 60 years later after borrowing a book from Worthing Library.

He said: "I was looking through it and came across the story of a pilot. Through piecing together dates, I realised he was the one who dropped the bomb on the Odeon.

"I was shocked to see he was still alive and in his eighties.

"He said his aircraft was being chased at the time and that was why he had let his bombs drop. He never meant to bomb us.

"It has totally changed the way I feel. I didn't know he was only young like me, just an ordinary bloke following orders. I don't hold a grudge any more."

Mr Carr, a retired HGV driver, said the bomb changed his life, adding: "I shouldn't even have been in the cinema that day.

"My mother told me not to go but I went anyway. I can still see the flash now. I wouldn't be here today if the bomb hadn't hit the girders.

"I was lucky to escape it at all."