The haphazard Blitz spirit that saved our art from the Luftwaffe
Many of the Crown Jewels, prised off their settings, ended up in a Bath Oliver tin
336pp, John Murray, £16.99, ebook £9.99 ★★★★ ★
Ever since our empire took a grip on the world, we Brits have prided ourselves on being one up on Johnny Foreigner when it comes to organising things. Sceptics might point in contradiction to the fiascos of Indian partition and Brexit, but it’s not an altogether unjustifiable boast.
What we are perhaps uniquely good at isn’t so much rigorous master planning (of the sort that made such a success of Prince Philip’s funeral), but situations that require a touch of Ealing comedy ingenuity: Alec Guinness as the diffident backstairs boffin, clashing with the obdurate Whitehall pen-pusher while cheerful Cockney ladies dispense from the tea trolley. In other words, we know that good-humoured cooperation and last-minute improvisation are the magic ingredients.
Caroline Shenton’s vigorously researched and highly entertaining new book explores one such history – the safe-keeping of artistic treasures during the Second World War. It is not a tale of high drama – there’s no heroism or derring-do – but the dogged patience, hard work and quiet intelligence on display are as heartwarming as the tetchiness and snobbery are all too human. “Ordinary people were called upon to achieve extraordinary things in the middle of a national crisis,” Shenton claims – and with a bit of fuss and muddle, they did.
The focus is on institutions such as the British Museum, the National Gallery, the V&A, the Public Records Office and the Tower of London. Three hundred tons of national archive (including Guy Fawkes’ confession) went to a disused wing of the ancient prison at Shepton Mallet; the recently discovered Sutton Hoo horde was swiftly buried again in the Aldwych tube tunnel; and the monarch’s regalia was carted off to Windsor, with many of the Crown Jewels prised off their settings, wrapped in cotton wool “and placed inside a tall glass preserving-jar with a screw-top & rubber washer”, further packed “inside a Bath Oliver biscuit tin, which fitted it to perfection.”
Wealthy folk did their bit by opening up the cellars or attics of their country piles – accommodating inert boxes being understandably preferred to the volatile quantities of slum children and squaddies. The querulousness of one grand lady, threatened with the billeting of human beings in place of paintings, says it all: “I think it would be very unfair to me – after having had the Tate Gallery here for two years entirely free of charge (which I was very pleased to do) ... it is quite unsuitable for Land Girls – every room (some panelled) is furnished with very valuable furniture – which I could not replace added to which I have no servants left and have to use my kitchen as my own dining room so there would be no cooking arrangements possible for them – my water supply is very limited and the sanitary arrangements would not stand a number of additional people.”
But artefacts and documents were not free of problems either. Security required round-the-clock watch (though, amazingly, there is no evidence here of significant thefts); damp and moth caused mould and worse; temperature and humidity control was precarious.
Old Master paintings needed further kid-glove treatment that draughty stately homes and their châtelaines could not provide. Much of the National Gallery ended up in a cavern in Snowdonia: Shenton gives a vivid account of the scratchy relations between the super-smooth Director Kenneth Clark, the scholar-curator Martin Davies and the logistics man Ian Rawlins, but their joint handling of the operation was masterly – including the return of one canvas to London every month for public exhibition, a morale-boosting exercise that complemented Myra Hess’s daily concerts.
What could not be moved took the brunt of the Blitz: a quarter of a million volumes lost from the British Museum Reading Room, thousands of specimens from the Natural History Museum, a third of the newspaper collection housed in Colindale. A terrible, irreplacable toll, though British triumphalists should remember that we would be guilty of similarly ruthless destruction of innocent German heritage.