London: The greatest city
In war and peace
The Second World War presented London with a huge challenge as the Germans unleashed on the city a new form of 20th-century warfare: massive aerial bombardment. Adolf Hitler boasted: 'Should the Royal Air Force drop 2,000 or 3,000 or 4,000 kilograms of bombs, then we will drop 150,000, 180,000, 230,000, 300,000, 400,000!'
Bracing for the worst
When Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, Londoners braced themselves for the worst. To prepare for the anticipated air raids, the authorities raised barrage balloons across the city and installed anti-aircraft guns in public parks. There was a blackout at night and practice air-raid sirens. Londoners were issued with gas masks, and over half a million women and children were evacuated from the city.
Churchill predicted that the first week of bombing alone would result in up to 40,000 casualties. He described London as the greatest target in the world – 'a tremendous, fat, valuable cow'.
'London in 1939 was without the slightest doubt the greatest city in the world,' says author Philip Ziegler. 'More traffic passed through the Port of London than through any other port in the world. It was the seat of the judiciary, of the executive, of legislature, of the court. It was the prime target for any aggressor. If you could knock out London, you could knock out England. You could almost knock out western Europe.'
The Blitz
1939 turned out to be an anti-climax – it was the year of the 'phoney war'. British civilians were untouched by the carnage on mainland Europe. But, finally, on 4 September 1940, Hitler, incensed by British air raids on Berlin, announced a new strategy: the mass bombardment of British cities. He promised to erase them – and London was his main target. Three days later German planes flew up the Thames towards the commercial and industrial districts in the east of the city. The Blitz had begun.
The first three days of bombing left 1,200 people dead and London's docks in flames. This terrifying inferno was more intense than anything seen in London since 1666. 'The most overwhelming impact of the Blitz on London was fire,' says Guy de la Bédoyère. 'Yet again in London's history, the place was ravaged by blazes that destroyed churches, public buildings, houses and whole streets. An enormous level of destruction.'
Video: Sheltering in the tube
Given that everyone was expecting bombs, the arrangements to protect civilians were totally inadequate. What's more, the authorities had decided that Londoners shouldn't be allowed to use the tube as a shelter. They feared that London would become a city of troglodytes who would never surface to get on with their work.
However, within days of the Blitz beginning, Londoners took matters into their own hands. According to Guy de la Bédoyère, 'people started to buy penny and halfpenny tickets to take an underground train, which meant they could just go down on to the station and there they stayed. The government simply gave in and recognised that there was nothing they could do about this. They would have to let people use the underground stations as shelters.'
Images of people sleeping in the tube have entered the mythology of the war. But, in fact, even at the height of the Blitz, only 4% of Londoners spent the night in the underground. 'You get two versions of what it was like sheltering in an underground station,' says Guy de la Bédoyère. 'You get the Cockney, cor-blimey, love-a-duck, jolly-good version – drinking cups of tea, singing songs. But other people who came through on the trains in the morning would describe the stench of urine, dirty blankets, grubby children – they found it revolting.'
Anderson shelters
Many more Londoners were among the two million households who were issued with Anderson shelters, corrugated steel structures that you erected yourself in the garden. Others used the cellars of their homes, or one of the 5,000 public shelters: concrete block houses at street level. In the autumn of 1940, for 68 nights continuously, with just one break, the trek to the shelter was a nightly ritual for thousands of Londoners.
'As the war developed,' says Guy de la Bédoyère, 'people started to make the shelters more comfortable for themselves. There were "shelter callers", for example, which were travelling bands of musicians who would visit a shelter and put on a little performance. People would bring along drinks, introduce some furniture, bunks, chairs, that sort of thing – and try and entertain themselves to while away the hours during an air raid.'
Strange as it may seem, the vast majority of Londoners simply chose to stay in their beds during the raids. 'The most noticeable point about Londoners' response to the air raids was that it was not very dramatic,' says Philip Ziegler. 'They did not surge out and shake their fists at the skies or strike dramatic poses and say, "We will go on fighting until the end!" Nor did they panic and hide in corners and scream. They just phlegmatically went on.'
Altered perceptions
The Germans had hoped that the sheer relentlessness of the attacks would terrify London into submission. But, perversely, many Londoners reacted by becoming grimly determined to continue with ordinary life – turning up for work, going to the cinema and even eating out despite the limited choice of food on offer.
'The Blitz altered the perception of what London and Londoners were like,' says writer Robert Elms. 'I think people in the rest of Britain had always thought of these chirpy Cockneys as a bit dodgy. They duck and dive, they're untrustworthy, they're always out for a penny. But then, suddenly, this city of untrustworthy pick-pockets shows its steel, shows that it can hold out in the face of an extraordinary barrage and it can do it with a smile on its face and a song on its lips. It sounds a bit corny now, but that is how it was. It was extraordinary.'
Destruction
On 29 December 1940, another great fire raid devastated the commercial heart of the capital, but, miraculously, this time St Paul's cathedral escaped. 'If there was one building in London that symbolised the determination of a Londoner to stand fast, I think it was St Paul's,' says Philip Ziegler. 'The most dramatic of all the Blitz images is that wonderful picture of the dome of St Paul's silhouetted against a wall of flames.'
St Paul's may have survived, but the House of Commons, Westminster Abbey, the Law Courts, the Royal Mint, the medieval Guild Hall and the Tower of London were damaged, as well as 14 of Wren's priceless churches. But despite the immense damage to the city, Hitler failed in destroying Londoners' morale. After one last huge raid on 10 May 1941, he turned his attention away from Britain to opening a second front against Russia. The worst was over.
'Vast tracts of London had been almost wiped out,' says Philip Ziegler. 'The East End and Docklands had been shattered. The great fire bombs, in particular, had swept away whole streets, whole areas. All over London there were huge holes where formerly fine houses had stood.'
By the time the war ended in May 1945, London had taken the biggest hit. In all, 3.5 million homes had been damaged or destroyed. Nearly 1.5 million people had been made homeless. Of the 61,000 civilians killed in Britain, half had died in London.
Post-war shabbiness
Just as Charles II had after the Great Fire of 1666, some saw in the wreckage of the Blitz an opportunity to regenerate. But once again history repeated itself: after the war, there wasn't the time or the money to rebuild London as a beautiful planned city.
Many post-war buildings were hideous eyesores. In size, London was overtaken by Tokyo, Mexico City and Shanghai. Britain declined as a world power, and for 40 years, London declined, too. Its transport system, which had once led the world, was never updated. Its great public buildings became shabby and run down.
However, in the 1980s London started to fight back. The City of London once again became an international financial powerhouse and new landmarks sprang up in the east. And in the run-up to the Millennium, London's public buildings were given a new lease of life.
Regeneration
'I remember, as a child in London in the 1970s, that it was a gloomy place,' says author Patrick Dillon. 'The river at its heart of it was dead, dirty; to the east were decaying docks and empty factories. But now London, which had seemed to be a city whose glory days were in the past, has again regenerated itself as it has throughout its history. It's become a centre of fashion and commerce. London is partying again. It's become a place where people want to come from all over the world.
'And in the last 20 years, London has regenerated itself architecturally as well, so that a drab, dirty, rather dismal place is again full of new buildings. Whether it's Foster's tower block in the City, the Millennium Bridge, the Tate Modern, all of our public buildings, our river, Hungerford Bridge – these have been regenerated through forward-looking modern architecture.'
Today, London is still a great world city, the largest in western Europe. In its 2,000-year history, a muddy estuary on a small island at the edge of Europe has become a great global crossroads, a melting pot attracting people from hundreds of different cultures.
'This is the one city where, at many given points in its history, you would have felt you were at the centre of the world, because all the world was here,' says Robert Elms. 'Not because it's a city that lords it. It's not the most beautiful. Often it's an ugly old man. But it is a powerful and yet tolerant and open old man. It's an old man with open arms.'
London survived fires, revolution, disease and war and emerged from them battered but unbowed. In the words of Winston Churchill: 'London is like some huge prehistoric animal, capable of enduring terrible injuries, mangled and bleeding from many wounds and yet preserving its life and movement.'
