Introduction and Historiography

Through the term, ‘London blitz’, it is easy to become accustomed to understanding that the city as a whole faced the air-raid sirens and bombing raids, that despite some areas being hit more than others, actual blitz experience was the same wherever in the capital one happened to be. In actual fact there were many London blitzes, not one, influenced by a myriad of metropolitan localities giving rise to an agency of locality that helped to shape the lived blitz experience. To be able to fundamentally grasp the London blitz, one must fully appreciate the very city that lay beneath the enemy bombers.