The Blitz, Juliet Gardiner
The Blitz, Juliet Gardiner
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The Blitz

Author: Juliet Gardiner

Narrator: Catherine Harvey

Unabridged: 17 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/31/2011

Synopsis

From the author of ‘Wartime’ and ‘The Thirties’comes an outstanding history of the most prolonged and devastating attack ever endured by Britain's civilian population – the Blitz. September 1940 marked the beginning of Nazi Germany's sustained attack on civilian Britain. Lasting eight months, the Blitz was a new and terrible form of warfare that had been predicted throughout the 1930s, widely feared since Neville Chamberlain's declaration that Britain was at war. Yet, compared with other great events of that war – Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, D-Day – the Blitz remains curiously overlooked; while the London Blitz has been much documented, there exists very little in the way of a comprehensive account of the Blitz experience as a whole – or of its social, political and cultural implications. In her new book, critically acclaimed historian Juliet Gardiner finally gives the Blitz the historical attention it deserves. Exploring this national story, she charts the impact of the nightly bombings on the entire country. And while loss and devastation affected the whole of Britain, the attacks also served to galvanise the nation: in the face of the terrifying Nazi onslaught, a new determination steadily emerged. Revealing, original and beautifully written, The Blitz is a much-needed re-examination of one of the most important aspects of Second World War history.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Caroline on April 11, 2012

I've read several of Gardiner's books before, and this one doesn't disappoint. She has a very readable style and manages to strike a good balance between the broad picture and the intimate details of people's lives. The Blitz was obviously had an enormous impact across the nation, but what really br......more

Goodreads review by Mark on December 28, 2018

For the British, there is perhaps no more iconic event of the 20th century than the Blitz. The German bombing campaign that stretched from September 1940 until June 1941 was an event that people experienced throughout the British isles, from London and the southeast to Belfast in Northern Ireland. A......more

Goodreads review by Tracyk on February 03, 2019

It took me a year to read this. It is a very good book, and a topic I am extremely interested in, but it was harrowing to read about the Blitz, and non-fiction isn't my favorite reading. So I took lots of breaks. A lot of it was first hand accounts of life in Britain during the Blitz, what people ha......more

Goodreads review by William on May 08, 2020

Historian Juliet Gardiner's The Blitz: The British Under Attack offers a highly focused view of World War II as seen from the shattered streets of Great Britain, particularly London, from the first wave of German bombers on the night of 7 September 1940 through the last major bombing runs in May 194......more

Goodreads review by Jan on September 19, 2019

Excellent research tool that can only be read a bit at a time because of its harrowing narrative. The sheer scale of the subject is humbling. The last few chapters ran out of steam a little, and the table of statistics per city frequently referred to, but not included so far as I could tell, would h......more

Quotes

Reviews for ‘The Thirties’ 'Hugely impressive…she gives us a vast panorama, taking in everybody from debutantes to the destitute, painting a thoroughly entertaining and convincing picture of a nation deeply divided by class and region…for the depth of its research, the quality of the writing and the sheer richness and vibrancy of the material, this is a quite outstanding work of social history. From architecture to the abdication, from zeppelins to zoos, it is comfortably the definitive account of a decade that has been much maligned' Daily Telegraph 'Excellent…she has mastered a vast number of written sources, and the resulting synthesis is also a work of graceful, eloquent historical imagination….all the peaks are covered with calm competence, but it is in the bypaths she takes that THE THIRTIES excels….memorable…..the cinematic clarity of Gardiner's descriptions…make her book captivating' Sunday Times 'Enthralling…THE THIRTIES weaves an eclectic and exciting story….Gardiner has an almost cinematic sense of detail….The greatest tribute to Gardiner's book is that it doesn't read as history, more a vibrant, nuanced narrative of the lives lived by our immediate predecessors' The Times

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