Blitz - John Nichol

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**‘[Nichol] has a marvellous eye for detail . . . this is history at its finest. Truly memorable' Daily Mirror The Second World War was not only fought in the skies above Europe or on distant beaches. Between 1939 and 1945, Hitler’s aerial onslaught crashed into lives across the UK night after night, killing more than 60,000 civilians and leaving millions homeless. For too long, ‘The Blitz’ – from the German ‘Blitzkrieg’ or lightning war – has been framed as a few desperate months between September 1940 and May 1941 that mainly affected London. In reality, the scope of the attack on the home front was far more widespread, and far more devastating. Now, John Nichol tells this supposedly familiar narrative – one of the most important events in British history – afresh.   Beginning with a search to understand his mother’s experiences of the blitz on Tyneside – drawing on fragments of memory and the unanswered questions she left behind – Nichol ranges outward to reveal a truly national history. From Dover to Glasgow, Cardiff to Manchester, he uncovers astonishing accounts of catastrophe and resilience. Of ‘ordinary’ men, women and children catapulted into harm’s way. Of heroic firefighters battling infernos, the unflinching bravery required to defuse unexploded bombs, families wiped out in an instant, communities left
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