Blitz myth

April 23, 2013 6:37 AM

A friend's comment, "Coventry was under martial law you know." about this video has made me curious about the myth of the Blitz. I've come across references to civic collapse in Liverpool, defeatism in Plymouth and extensive government censorship. Although there are numerous books covering the period, many seem to either reiterate the same propaganda, or be just too reactionary. Can anyone recommend a good book to get a balanced perspective on the effect of the blitz?
posted by BadMiker to Society & Culture (2 answers total)

Angus Calder's The Myth of the Blitz was one of the first books to question the myth. Clive Ponting's 1940: Myth and Reality mounted a full-scale revisionist attack, but is generally thought to have gone too far to the opposite extreme. The most detailed account is Robert Mackay's Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain during the Second World War (reviewed here), which draws on material from the Mass Observation archive and the Ministry of Information's Home Intelligence reports (on the latter, see also Paul Addison and Jeremy Crang, Listening to Britain). If you want a less academic study, try Juliet Gardiner's The Blitz: The British Under Attack, which takes the academic research on board but weaves it into a narrative for the general reader.
posted by verstegan at 11:18 AM on April 23, 2013 [2 favorites]

There's also Susan Grayzel's At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz, which has some interesting things to say about wartime films like Mrs Miniver and In Which We Serve, both of which played a big part in creating the myth of the Blitz.
posted by verstegan at 3:27 AM on April 27, 2013