Astonishing pictures of London streets after they were bombed to smithereens

My great-grandmother slept through the Second World War.

She lived in Southall and, as an enthusiastic believer in fate, refused to go down to the shelters, proclaiming, “If God wants to take me, he’ll take me”. I feel like she could have perhaps met God halfway and got herself down to a shelter, but I also appreciate that despite her questionable decisions, I’m here to say that.

She was also a ridiculously heavy sleeper, and when the day-to-day small talk turned to, “Ooh, did you hear the bombs last night?” she would answer that she had in fact slept through her neighbour’s house being reduced to rubble.

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Between September and November 1940, almost 30,000 bombs were dropped on London. In the first month, around 6,000 people were killed. London, however, adopted an attitude of “spirited defiance”.

Winston Churchill’s Blitz-spirit phrase was “Business as usual”, and people could be seen going about their normal jobs surrounded by rubble – sellers continued selling, clerks set up desks outside and wore hard hats.

In his book London at War, Philip Ziegler said that Londoners, “made a deliberate effort to seem nonchalant and unafraid”, perhaps because when an enemy has decided to crumble your home around you, there’s not much control to be had.

They can take your house but they can’t take your songs, your jokes, your poise, your sanity.