Blitz Spirit With Lucy Worsley

BBC1, 8.30pm

Usually when Lucy Worsley (right) fronts a history documentary you can expect plenty of gaiety and dressing up. But this feature-length film on the campaign of terror by the Luftwaffe against Britain in 1940-41 is far too sombre an affair for larks.

As Worsley looks back to the Blitz 80 years on, she recreates the horror that ordinary people in London and cities across the nation faced night after night from the relentless waves of bombers.

Survival meant hiding out in cramped shelters or underground stations, and yet somehow life carried on for those who were spared amid the rubble of bombed-out houses.

A powerful combination of archive footage of a war-torn country in flames and first-person accounts drawn from diaries and memoirs builds up a searing picture of Britain’s darkest hour.