Blitz: The Story of December 29, 1940

Front Cover
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006 - History - 430 pages
Churchill called it his nation's greatest trial and its finest hour. Europe had fallen to Hitler and Britain stood alone. Determined to bomb the English into submission, the German Luftwaffe attacked London nearly every night, targeting the "Square Mile," the heart of the city and the site of some of its greatest landmarks. In this gripping historical narrative, Margaret Gaskin puts the reader into the middle of the Blitz, its horror and its heroism, by vividly reconstructing the night that Hitler tried to burn the city to the ground--the night that one of the war's most haunting photographs was taken, showing St. Paul's still standing amid burning ruins. Stunningly vivid and compelling, "Blitz" uses the voices of those on whom the bombshells fell--the ordinary and the famous, including Edward R. Murrow and FDR--to tell the story as it has never before been told.

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Contents

Very Well Alone
3
Obdurate and cocky
21
Practically no talk of horrors at all
33
Old man of the tribe
50
A leaning towards acrobatics
71
Two opposing worlds
87
Things had been wonderful
104
You would not mind London at all now
118
Burnt off like weed patches from the air
238
Blackwall Tunnel only mate
245
St Pauls must be saved at all costs
257
A ghostly pilgrimage
272
Like a sprig of holly on top of a Christmas pudding
290
Many fires about tonight old boy?
299
The most beautiful thing I have ever seen
311
CHORALE
323

The Typhoid Marys
133
FUGUE
155
Boots on the lawn boots on the wide stone stair
157
Goodnight Children Everywhere
176
Early English louts
187
Great sound waves washing over the city
206
It is going to be a warm night
215
As light as day
227
Poor old London
325
This is what weve been fighting for
359
What Remains Behind
372
Illustration CreditsCounty of London Map
378
Notes
389
Index
417
Copyright

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About the author (2006)

MARGARET GASKIN studied history at Queen Mary College in London's East End. She lives in London.

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