The Blitz: The British Under Attack

Juliet Gardiner

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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 It soon became evident that many of the attitudes in society were outdated.The most obvious inequalities between British society also became clear, and yet with everyone sharing the same devastation, these differences slowly began to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.

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