Blitz Spirit

Becky Brown Hodder & Stoughton €18.99 ★★★★ ★

Blitz Spirit’ is a phrase beloved of UK politicians who want to invoke the sacrifices of the wartime generation and appeal to a collective sense. In the introduction to her new book, Becky Brown succinctly describes it as ‘a psychological bunting that festooned the national mind’ in Britain during wartime. But what exactly was Blitz Spirit, and can it tell us anything about ourselves then and now?

A perfect place to start is the treasure trove of documents that comprises the Mass Observation archive. Founded in 1937, Mass Observation set out to create ‘an anthropology of ourselves’ by asking a posse of untrained observers to record their experiences of everyday life. Brown’s book features an eclectic selection from the wartime years and is full of fascinating and sometimes surprising insights.

Take the attitudes of ordinary people towards the UK government. While there’s a lot of praise for Churchill’s (below) oratory and leadership, there’s also some suspicion, even resentment. ‘I bet that Churchill & Woolton (food minister) aren’t freezing themselves,’ a teacher in Bedford reports someone muttering in a discussion about fuel supplies, while the sister-in-law of another observer wonders why the Prime Minister always has to have a cigar in his mouth ‘when we are told to avoid spending money’. Britain was far more class-conscious then than it is now, but the book captures a society in transition, particularly among women enjoying, for the first time, paid employment and determined not to return to domestic drudgery once peace is restored. ‘Oh I am proud, but I am tired too,’ a secretary in Glasgow writes when the end of the war is announced.