Blitz: The Story of December 29, 1940Churchill 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. |
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 |
378 | |
Notes | 389 |
417 | |
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