:00:11. > :00:19.On seven September, 1940, a sharp-eyed warden surveyed the
:00:20. > :00:23.London skyline. He spotted miniature silver planes
:00:24. > :00:28.circling around the target area in such perfect formation that they
:00:29. > :00:35.looked like children's toy models at a fair.
:00:36. > :00:39.Britain had been bracing itself for the last 12 months.
:00:40. > :01:01.Now the front line of the Second World War was coming home.
:01:02. > :01:07.would come into its own. With death a constant presence, life
:01:08. > :01:11.became urgent and precious, and in this febrile atmosphere, allegiances
:01:12. > :01:20.would be tested and infidelities begun. It was an absolute gift for a
:01:21. > :01:24.writer and search of new material. A few loyal members of the London's
:01:25. > :01:28.literary set remained in the city to do battle on the home front.
:01:29. > :01:34.They were waiting for the opportunity to prove themselves.
:01:35. > :01:35.What lay on the horizon would be the making of them and would inspire
:01:36. > :02:09.some of their finest work. Like many Londoners, writer Graham
:02:10. > :02:15.Greene evacuated his wife and children to the countryside.
:02:16. > :02:22.But, ever alert to possible material, he also contacted his
:02:23. > :02:26.publishe suggesting: "You might be interested in a book called The
:02:27. > :02:29.First Hundred Days which will be a personal account of conditions in a
:02:30. > :02:35.bombed London." But all this was a little premature.
:02:36. > :02:40.It would be another year before the bombers arrived.
:02:41. > :02:44.For those who remained in London, anticipating a battle on the home
:02:45. > :02:47.front, it was a tedious time of watching and waiting.
:02:48. > :02:53.People tried on their gas-masks, watched for fires that never
:02:54. > :02:56.started, and nervously eyed the doormat for their call-up papers
:02:57. > :03:00.from the ministry. And while they waited, London's literati gravitated
:03:01. > :03:21.here to waited, London's literati gravitated
:03:22. > :03:28.With writer and journalist Elizabeth Bowen, with poets Dylan Thomas and
:03:29. > :03:35.Hilda Doolittle, and perhaps Evelyn Waugh if he happened to be in town.
:03:36. > :03:41.These were the successors to the Bloomsbury Group, the stayers-on in
:03:42. > :03:48.London, the people who found the climate of danger almost addictive.
:03:49. > :03:54.Out of the fug and ferment of this bohemian quarter would come some of
:03:55. > :04:02.the most compelling literary out of the heat of the blitz.
:04:03. > :04:06.They're all inspired by the wartime lives of their creators. Lives that
:04:07. > :04:27.would be turned upside-down when the bombing began.
:04:28. > :04:33.With the Thames to guide them, and the moonlighting the way, the aerial
:04:34. > :04:46.bombardment continued relentlessly until dawn.
:04:47. > :04:57.London awoke to find the East End in tatters.
:04:58. > :05:02.The blitz moved the front line from a distant mark on the map into our
:05:03. > :05:07.own streets and gardens. That autumn, the brutality of the Second
:05:08. > :05:13.World War came crashing into people's homes.
:05:14. > :05:19.As Graham Greene observed: It happens in the kitchen, on landings,
:05:20. > :05:38.beside washing baskets; it comes to us without staring a
:05:39. > :05:42.beside washing baskets; it comes to ceased to function as one great city
:05:43. > :05:47.but broke down into a series of small towns.
:05:48. > :05:53.In this strange surreal world, even familiar stomping grounds became
:05:54. > :05:58.foreign territory. In the Ministry of Fear, a spy
:05:59. > :06:05.thriller set in wartime London, Graham Greene describes the morning
:06:06. > :06:11.after a particularly heavy attack. This was the same route they had
:06:12. > :06:16.taken last night, but it had been elaborately and trivially changed.
:06:17. > :06:21.What a lot of activity there had been in a few hours.
:06:22. > :06:27.The sticking up of notices, the amountering of traffic, the getting
:06:28. > :06:29.to know a slightly different London. He noticed the briskness, the
:06:30. > :07:01.cheerfulness on the faces. The blitz created a strange
:07:02. > :07:06.suspended moment inside which anything seemed possible.
:07:07. > :07:11.And writer Elizabeth Bowen observing London from her flat overlooking
:07:12. > :07:15.Regents Park sensed something heady in the air that lent itself to
:07:16. > :07:19.romance. It came to be rumoured, she wrote,
:07:20. > :07:25.that everybody in London was in love.
:07:26. > :07:31.That summer, Bowen began an affair with a Canadian diplomat, Charles
:07:32. > :07:37.Ritchie, a relationship her husband conveniently decided to ignore.
:07:38. > :07:57.Their passionate liaisons would tea fine her wartime experience and help
:07:58. > :08:01.balcony of her sitting room that looks out over Regents Park. The
:08:02. > :08:05.tall call room is full of mirrors, flowers, and books. She wants to
:08:06. > :08:12.dedicate her next novel to me. I hope she will, and that it will be
:08:13. > :08:18.her best. The heat of the Day is a eulogy to
:08:19. > :08:23.the strength of a city under siege, and an open love letter to Charles
:08:24. > :08:28.Ritchie to whom she did indeed dedicate the book. I think she used
:08:29. > :08:30.the phrase open love letter to Charles Ritchie to whom she did
:08:31. > :08:32.indeed dedicate the book. I think she used the phrase "almost
:08:33. > :08:36.exonerated people from guilt" because of the unusual nature of the
:08:37. > :08:40.times. It was almost like the blitz gave people licence. What I think
:08:41. > :08:45.she needed was a big relationship to fuel her imagination, to give her a
:08:46. > :08:49.secret life, if you like. Charles was immensely socially popular,
:08:50. > :09:07.everyone wanted Charles at their parties, and he
:09:08. > :09:12.everyone wanted Charles at their while, it was a very passionate
:09:13. > :09:14.affair. I think the war gave it its intensity because, as she said,
:09:15. > :09:20.there was always the third person in a relationship, which was history.
:09:21. > :09:25.That time couldn't have happened except this time.
:09:26. > :09:30.They had met each other at first not very often throughout that heady
:09:31. > :09:37.autumn of the first London air-raids. Never had any season been
:09:38. > :09:42.more felt.One bought the poetic sense of it with the sense of death.
:09:43. > :09:48.Out of the mists of morning, charred by the unmisty glitter, between the
:09:49. > :09:52.last sunset and the first note of the siren, the darkening, glassy
:09:53. > :09:57.tenseness of the evening was drawn fine. And you felt more and more
:09:58. > :09:59.called upon to observe the daytime as a pure and
:10:00. > :10:19.called upon to observe the daytime the time? How she was describing was
:10:20. > :10:28.a thinning of the membrane between the this and the that. It was the
:10:29. > :10:31.thinning of the membrane between everything between rich and poor
:10:32. > :10:35.people, the living and the dead, and lovers. Relationships grew up very,
:10:36. > :10:41.very fast, that people felt liberated in some sense to do things
:10:42. > :10:44.that they didn't do before; that there was a conspiracy feeling
:10:45. > :10:52.between those people who stayed in London during the war, and those who
:10:53. > :10:56.had refugeed themselves to the country. One of the things she said
:10:57. > :10:59.was in general it was the wicked who stayed and the good who went away,
:11:00. > :11:08.and of course she wasn't a wicked woman, but you can - you know what
:11:09. > :11:09.she means. When each new dawn was
:11:10. > :11:29.she means. in the countryside, a general
:11:30. > :11:33.feeling of unmarriedness prevailed, and London became a playground for
:11:34. > :11:41.adults who found themselves single all over again.
:11:42. > :11:46.For Graham Greene, whose we've Vivien had been evacuated to Sussex,
:11:47. > :11:52.the combination of danger and sexual freedom was especially aluring.
:11:53. > :11:55.Green and Vivien had married a decade previously and produced two
:11:56. > :12:01.children, but the relationship soon dwindled into a purely companionate
:12:02. > :12:05.marriage. So escape the Khost phobia of family
:12:06. > :12:09.life, Green rent add room in Bloomsbury where he could retreat to
:12:10. > :12:14.write. It was, perhaps inevitable that, on
:12:15. > :12:18.the day war was declared, Green would glance out of his study window
:12:19. > :12:19.and catch the eye of the land lady's daughter.
:12:20. > :12:37.The passionate relationship daughter.
:12:38. > :12:43.non-starter. What Dorothy lacked in beauty, she more than made up for
:12:44. > :12:49.with an infectious laugh and a redoubtable spirit.
:12:50. > :12:53.A fellow air-raid warden, Dorothy became Green's trusty accomplice on
:12:54. > :12:59.their treacherous nightly patrols, returning from duty in the early
:13:00. > :13:05.hours, they would fall into bed to make careless love as the bombs
:13:06. > :13:11.rained down outside. But the fact that Green had fallen
:13:12. > :13:16.for Dorothy Glover didn't prevent him seeking additional pleasures
:13:17. > :13:21.elsewhere, and these stolen liaise sons would find their way into the
:13:22. > :13:25.great post-war novel, The End of the Affair. It was dark and quiet by
:13:26. > :13:28.this time in the streets, although up in the moon, the sky moved the
:13:29. > :13:49.blobs and beams of search lights. up in the moon, the sky moved the
:13:50. > :13:57.woman flashed on her light and said, "Like to come home with me, dear?"
:13:58. > :14:02.Graham Greene had always been a thrill-seeker. In his youth he had
:14:03. > :14:06.added spice to his life by playing Russian roulette. Now, night after
:14:07. > :14:22.night, the blitz delivered everything he had always longed for:
:14:23. > :14:27.danger, tribulation, and sex. The aerial bombing brought the front
:14:28. > :14:33.line of the war home on to British soil.
:14:34. > :14:36.This was a civilian conflict. One of the most searing responses to
:14:37. > :14:39.the action wouldn't be penned by a soldier abroad but a spirited
:14:40. > :14:59.intellectual living my old town square.
:15:00. > :15:05.In 1942, American poet Hilda Doolittle wrote The Walls Do Not
:15:06. > :15:10.Fall, the first of a trilogy of poems written amid the 50 the 50,000
:15:11. > :15:13.incidents of the London blitz. Hilda Hilda Doolittle wrote The
:15:14. > :15:15.Walls Do Not Fall, the first of a trilogy of poems written amid the
:15:16. > :15:17.50,000 incidents of the London blitz.
:15:18. > :15:20.Hilda Doolittle, or "HD" as she was known to her friends, refused to
:15:21. > :15:22.leave London when the war n when the war began. "If one has taken joy and
:15:23. > :15:26.comfort from a country, one doesn't like to leave it when there is
:15:27. > :15:40.trouble about," she observed. During the blitz, HD lived a boldly
:15:41. > :15:45.bisexual life in Knightsbridge with her partner Bryer Bryer and her
:15:46. > :15:48.daughter, Perdita. The block she experienced in the
:15:49. > :16:07.1930s would be released. She found The block she experienced in the
:16:08. > :16:17.Ruin everywhere, yet, as the fallen roof leaves the sealed room open to
:16:18. > :16:20.the air, so, three our desolation, thoughts stir. Inspiration stalks us
:16:21. > :16:41.through gloom. On16 April 1941, London experienced
:16:42. > :16:44.the most brutal night of the blitz. Over 1,000 people died, 100,000
:16:45. > :16:55.homes were destroyed, and scores of firemen fought to prevent the blaze
:16:56. > :16:59.engulfing the city. Henny York had volunteered for the
:17:00. > :17:17.wartime fire service reasoning that the position was
:17:18. > :17:22.novel, Caught. They saw the whole fury of the conflagration in which
:17:23. > :17:29.they had to play a part. They sat very still beneath the
:17:30. > :17:35.immensity, for against it, warehouses, small towers, puny
:17:36. > :17:43.steeples seemed alive with sparks from the mile-high pandemonium of
:17:44. > :17:49.flame reflected in the quaking sky. Henry Yorke was already leading a
:17:50. > :17:51.double life, writing under the quaking sky.
:17:52. > :17:53.Henry Yorke was already leading a double life, writing under the pen
:17:54. > :17:56.name "Henry Green". During the blitz, London became a dramatic
:17:57. > :18:04.backdrop against which he played the starring part.
:18:05. > :18:07.Didn't York play up to the idea of firemen as heroes? He signed up at
:18:08. > :18:09.the beginning of the war as a fireman very much wanting to be a
:18:10. > :18:29.hero and London, and he loved the fact that
:18:30. > :18:33.he had his 48-hour shifts and then have a day off in which he would see
:18:34. > :18:38.the young girls he described as dragging on the floor when firemen
:18:39. > :18:45.passed, and take them to clubs, bars, and dance away. Girls used to
:18:46. > :18:49.say to each other, "Who is it something you're going out tonight?
:18:50. > :18:53.Someone you would like to die with?" The blitz gave him the opportunity
:18:54. > :18:58.to be a film star in an extraordinary set? Absolutely, yes.
:18:59. > :19:05.He loved playing roles. He had a whole set of personas, the
:19:06. > :19:09.aristocrat, the businessman, then, in the Second World War, he became
:19:10. > :19:15.the hero, and that was the role he loved most of all.
:19:16. > :19:19.In a letter to a friend, York observed, "These times are an
:19:20. > :19:37.absolute gift to the writer," and they
:19:38. > :19:41.in London was a target. Henry Yorke was the son of a wealthy
:19:42. > :19:46.industrialist, but, like the privileged hero of his novel Caught,
:19:47. > :19:52.he found a night on duty in the fire service soon put pay to social
:19:53. > :19:56.difference. In some fantastic way I am sure you
:19:57. > :19:59.only get in a war, we were suddenly alone and forced to rely on one
:20:00. > :20:07.another entirely. But, after 12 months of bickering,
:20:08. > :20:16.each crew was thrown upon itself on its own resources. The only thing to
:20:17. > :20:20.do was to keep together. Most of London literati came from
:20:21. > :20:24.upper middle-class stock, but, in the rush and tumble of wartime, they
:20:25. > :20:28.found themselves mixing with people from all walks of life.
:20:29. > :20:49.Nowhere was there from all walks of life.
:20:50. > :20:52.Elizabeth Bowen revelled in the fact that her fellow wardens were of all
:20:53. > :20:56.types, so different, in fact, that were it not for the war, they
:20:57. > :21:00.wouldn't have met at all. She detected a new, more egalitarian
:21:01. > :21:05.society. We've almost stopped talking about democracy, she wrote,
:21:06. > :21:10.because, for the first time, we are a democracy. We are more, we are
:21:11. > :21:16.almost a come immune. -- commune. Meanwhile, Graham Greene
:21:17. > :21:20.turned his uncomfortable nights into a scene for his book, the Ministry
:21:21. > :21:26.of Fear. Ayerza long the walls, the bodies
:21:27. > :21:32.lay two deep, while, outside, the raid rumbles and book, the Ministry
:21:33. > :21:34.of Fear. Ayerza long the walls, the bodies
:21:35. > :21:37.lay two deep, while, outside, the raid rumbles and reskieded. --
:21:38. > :21:57.resceded. An old man snored, and two lovers lay with their
:21:58. > :22:00.resceded. An old man snored, and two inappropriate goings on. An official
:22:01. > :22:05.accompanying the chief warden on one of his nightly visits was disgusted
:22:06. > :22:09.to note a couple locked in an intimate embrace. But that is Mr
:22:10. > :22:14.Green, the chief warden explained, one of our finest wardens, and his
:22:15. > :22:21.nice wife. Mr Green's nice wife was of course his long-term miss stress,
:22:22. > :22:28.Dorothy. -- misstress, Dorothy.
:22:29. > :22:33.Towards the end of 1942, the war retreated from the immediate horizon
:22:34. > :22:38.to a distant pin-prick on the map, and London, devoid of danger, began
:22:39. > :22:44.to feel worn out and world-weary. The gay abandon of the previous year
:22:45. > :22:47.was spent, but the chaos and the rationing remained. On leave from
:22:48. > :23:08.the Marines, Evelyn Waugh rationing remained. On leave from
:23:09. > :23:11.losing its buoyancy, and despite the relentlessly upbeat propaganda,
:23:12. > :23:16.people were simply tired of taking it.
:23:17. > :23:21.To work or think was to ache. In offices, factories, ministries,
:23:22. > :23:25.shops, kitchens. The hot, yellow sands of each afternoon ran out
:23:26. > :23:32.slowly. Fatigue was the run reality.
:23:33. > :23:36.You dare not envisage sleep. Apathetic, the injured and dying in
:23:37. > :23:46.the hospitals watched light changed on walls which might fall tonight.
:23:47. > :23:50.For Elizabeth Bowen, this change of mood co-insighted with a cooling off
:23:51. > :23:54.in her affair with Charles Ritchie, following an afternoon in Kew
:23:55. > :23:58.Gardens, Ritchie confessed in his diary, "I am in love with Elizabeth
:23:59. > :24:17.imaginatively." It was becoming diary, "I am in love with Elizabeth
:24:18. > :24:19.and it never did become institutionalised, that love affair,
:24:20. > :24:22.because they never could live together, and they never did live
:24:23. > :24:26.together, and it was always a question of secret meetings and
:24:27. > :24:32.hurried meetings. How much do you think this relationship found its
:24:33. > :24:37.way into her writing? Hugely. I think she needed it in order to
:24:38. > :24:41.write - put it that way round. She said, "I am a writer before I am a
:24:42. > :24:45.woman." However bad the things that happened to her, it could be fed
:24:46. > :24:50.into her writing. She needed intensity of life in order to write,
:24:51. > :24:58.but the writing was what it was all for,that kind of way.
:24:59. > :25:03.The months before the declaration of peace were as strained as the last
:25:04. > :25:08.days before the outbreak of war. Elizabeth Bowen observed, "A general
:25:09. > :25:26.paralysis and apprehension, the reverse equivalent
:25:27. > :25:28.paralysis and apprehension, the distorted values, and the
:25:29. > :25:35.high-pitched level, and the fortitude which we had proved beyond
:25:36. > :25:41.doubt that we possessed. I have passed the flame. I had had my
:25:42. > :25:46.initiation. I was tired of all that. In the closing months of the war, HD
:25:47. > :25:50.suffered a mental collapse. During which she scaled the roof of her
:25:51. > :25:53.flat, flung her clothes to the ground, and had to be restrained
:25:54. > :25:58.from throwing herself off too. She would suffer from post-traumatic
:25:59. > :26:02.stress disorder for most of her adult life.
:26:03. > :26:16.But, like so many of London's literary set, HD had survived the
:26:17. > :26:18.war only by writing about it. On 27 March 1945, London was hit by
:26:19. > :26:36.the last bomb On 27 March 1945, London was hit by
:26:37. > :26:41.It really looks as if the war might be over soon, he wrote to his
:26:42. > :26:57.mother. One doesn't feel one will have much energy left for peace.
:26:58. > :27:01.For Elizabeth Bowen, the days following the declaration of peace
:27:02. > :27:05.were great and beautiful. The whole city seemed to leave the
:27:06. > :27:12.ground. Everyone wore a curious limpidity of
:27:13. > :27:18.expression, like new-born babies or souls just after death.
:27:19. > :27:25.Dazed but curiously dignified. But after the initial euphoria, a
:27:26. > :27:28.sense of deflation devended. London had grown used to trials and
:27:29. > :27:48.tribulations, had grown used to trials and
:27:49. > :27:52.Charles Ritchie returned to native Canada and married his cousin, while
:27:53. > :27:59.Graham Greene and Henry Yorke found, with the return of their wives and
:28:00. > :28:04.children, their extra-marital escapades became a little more
:28:05. > :28:08.problematic. This group of writers who lived and wrote in London during
:28:09. > :28:12.the blitz were all seeking something, something that lay
:28:13. > :28:16.forever round the next corner, in the next bar, in the warmth of
:28:17. > :28:23.another person's bed. For a moment, they found it, only to
:28:24. > :28:28.have it snatched away again when the final all-clear sounded. Elizabeth
:28:29. > :28:32.Bowen spoke for them all when she wrote, "I would not have missing in
:28:33. > :28:38.London during the war for anything. It was the most interesting of my
:28:39. > :28:57.life." The war had