Book description
In a series of powerful accounts drawn from diaries, letters, sound
archives and interviews recorded during the period of devastation,
discovery and transformation that make the blitz such an outstanding
event in Britain's recent past, "The Blitz" brings to life the
intense experiences, as they happened all over Britain.
The blitz proved to be a highly effective laboratory constructed out of
necessity, and intense forcing house for change.
Yet, compared to other great events of the Second World War - Dunkirk,
D - Day, and even VE Day, the Blitz remains curiously unexamined.
A type of cleansing resulted from it. It soon became evident that many
of the attitudes in society were outdated.
The most obvious inequalities between British society also became clear,
and yet with everyone sharing the same devastation, these differences
slowly began to lose their importance.
As well as a social laboratory, the Blitz was a medical one too.
Overworked doctors and scientists were forced to experiment and
improvise. It was during the Blitz that the embryonic blood transfusion
service grew to become a nation-wide institution. Psychoanalysis took on
a new meaning too: the enemy was now external, someone different from "us".
It gave coherence to artists and writers at the time such as Cecil Beaton.
The Blitz is arranged as a series of chronological chapters, each
focusing on an aspect of key importance.
The perspective will primarily be that of those who had actual
experience of those tumultuous months, when no one knew when or if the
bombings would stop.
Above all, it will be recounted in the words of the many "ordinary
people" across Britain who were caught up in the Blitz, their
stories, entries that are taken from the journals that they kept during
this difficult time and also interviews with those who are still alive
today. Juliet Gardiner is a respected commentator on British social
history from the Victorian times through to the 1950s. She was editor of
'History Today' magazine and is also author of the critically acclaimed
and bestselling 'Wartime'. Her monumental 'The Thirties: An Intimate
History' is published by Harper Press in February 2010.
