Planning for War: London and the Localities

Winston Churchill, at the moment Britain declared war on Germany, felt a deep sense of dread and foreboding: “The Prime Minister’s broadcast informed us that we were already at war, and he had scarcely ceased speaking when a strange, prolonged, wailing noise, afterwards to become familiar, broke upon the ear”. This was of course an air-raid siren and first heard in wartime. Churchill goes on to articulate what went through his mind at this moment, sentiments no doubt shared by fellow Londoners that September morning:What exactly were these fears and pre-war anxieties that people had been taught to expect once war arrived?