As the UK disintegrates, the Second World War and the NHS sometimes seem like the only shared stories we have left. References to the Blitz – both positively (national endurance) and negatively (the number of deaths) – at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic combined these twin myths. A new book revisiting how people experienced the Blitz is therefore opportune.
Edited by the late Paul Addison and Jeremy Crang, The Spirit of the Blitz follows Listening to Britain: Home Intelligence Reports on Britain’s Finest Hour, May to September 1940 (2011). Like its predecessor, The Spirit of the Blitz reproduces the morale reports created by the Home Intelligence department of the British Ministry of Information, this time from September 1940 through the dark winter to June 1941. A good introduction explains how historians now understand these documents. The reports themselves are reproduced almost in full, divided into three sections: September to December 1940, and January to March and April to June 1941. Each is supported with an introductory timeline and the book has a useful glossary to help readers understand references that would have been commonplace at the time.
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