We Remember the Blitz

Sep 22, 2024 12:44 AM

Author:Frank Shaw,Joan Shaw

'I went to the public baths and after I undressed I could hear someone whistling. I looked round to see if I could see anybody about, but I couldn't, so I got into the bath and lay back to relax. As soon as I did, of course, I looked up and saw a man putting in the glass windows that had been blown out the night before.' Joan Adams, Lichfield

On the night of 7 September 1940, bombs rained down on the defenceless and unprepared population of London for nine long hours. In November, raids spread to the rest of the country - starting in Coventry and taking in everywhere from Portsmouth, Cardiff, Belfast and Hull.

During the nine months of the Blitz, thousands of people were killed and injured, and thousands of buildings and homes destroyed. But, with stoicism and humour, life went on.

We Remember the Blitz is packed with vivid recollections from this important time in British history. Waking up in a damp shelter to the sound of bombing. Coming out of a cinema to discover that fires made night as bright as day. And, worst of all, the shock of seeing individuals and whole families killed in an instant. We hear from many who were there to pick up the pieces: ARP wardens, firemen - even the bakers, who would return to work under tarpaulin to ensure their neighbours had their daily loaf.

Filled with moving but often funny memories, We Remember the Blitz is a celebration of the British spirit, and clearly shows that the battle for Britain was won by 'the many'.

Reviews

Of all the books I have read this year, these are the most moving and memorable; more "people" stories than war stories, in countless voices and moods, of a richness and strength which makes fiction seem meagre

—— Shaun Usher , Daily Mail

In this book of first-hand accounts from the 1940-1941 Blitz, the human expereince of life on the home front is brought into focus. From ARP wardens to bakers, each recollection is written as though it were a letter to a friend. A riveting read

—— Daily Express

A lovingly researched work of the highest scholarship. It is hard to believe we will ever see a better narrative of what was perhaps the biggest collective blunder in the history of international relations

—— Niall Ferguson

[Reading The Sleepwalkers], it is as if a light had been turned on a half-darkened stage of shadowy characters cursing among themselves without reason ... [Clark] demolishes the standard view ... The brilliance of Clark's far-reaching history is that we are able to discern how the past was genuinely prologue ... In conception, steely scholarship and piercing insights, his book is a masterpiece

—— Harold Evans , New York Times Book Review

Impeccably researched, provocatively argued and elegantly written ... a model of scholarship

—— Sunday Times Books of the Year

Superb ... effectively consigns the old historical consensus to the bin ... It's not often that one has the privilege of reading a book that reforges our understanding of one of the seminal events of world history

—— Mail Online

A monumental new volume ... Revelatory, even revolutionary ... Clark has done a masterful job explaining the inexplicable

—— Boston Globe

Superb ... One of the great mysteries of history is how Europe's great powers could have stumbled into World War I ... This is the single best book I have read on this important topic

—— Fareed Zakaria

A meticulously researched, superbly organized, and handsomely written account

—— Military History

Clark is a masterly historian ... His account vividly reconstructs key decision points while deftly sketching the context driving them ... A magisterial work

—— Wall Street Journal

This compelling examination of the causes of World War I deserves to become the new standard one-volume account of that contentious subject

—— Foreign Affairs

A brilliant contribution

—— Times Higher Education

Clark is fully alive to the challenges of the subject ... He provides vivid portraits of leading figures ... [He] also gives a rich sense of what contemporaries believed was at stake in the crises leading up to the war

—— Irish Times

In recent decades, many analysts had tended to put most blame for the disaster [of the First World War] on Germany. Clark strongly renews an older interpretation which sees the statesmen of many countries as blundering blindly together into war

—— Stephen Howe , Independent BOOKS OF THE YEAR

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