Blitz: When World War Two Came Home

by John Nichol

The Blitz – from the German 'Blitzkrieg', lightning war – began as the Battle of Britain neared its conclusion. The Luftwaffe's sustained aerial bombing campaign against British urban centres lasted from September 1940 until May 1941. Over nine months, from Plymouth to Glasgow and Bristol to Newcastle, more than 43,500 civilians would die.

John Nichol has flown aircraft in combat, he has dropped bombs himself, but he knew little about the Blitz. The generation who endured it, including his parents, were often keen to keep silent and move on from the conflict that had consumed their childhoods.

Nearly half a million bombs were dropped on Britain in a few months, and every one of them had its own story. Beginning with the experience of John's mother and the attacks on the North East of England where he grew up, he explores what this series of assaults on the Home Front was truly like.

Interweaving the stories of survivors with modern experts, the perspective of those on the ground with the aircrew delivering destruction from on high, Blitz is a powerful new reckoning with one of the defining events of modern British history. It's about how a nation survived when death was a constant companion, and the deep, conflicting emotions experienced by all involved.

448 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication August 25, 2026

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a unique look at the Blitz as author John Nicol looks beyond the usual time frame and geographic locations. He looks beyond London and the typical places assaulted during WWII, veering beyond those and using North Shields, where his family came from, as an example of a war that affected local civilian populations.

Indeed, he looks at the history of bombing civilians, going back to Zeppelins in WWI and then continues to branch out. When King George VI created the George Cross to honour civilian gallantry, he covers only wartime heroics but also more recent events. Indeed, this book veers from wartime rescues to Grenfell Tower and everything from major events to individual heroism. I felt it pulled me a little out of the wartime story, but I applaud the author for trying something new to explain and explore a part of our history which still remains in so many memories. My own mother was evacuated in the war, even during the Sixties, when I was a young child, bomb sites remained, and many streets bear witness to the loss of neighbours.

With war still affecting so many people around the world, this is a reminder of how it can suddenly appear and cause chaos amongst civilians who must cope with the upheaval, death and destruction that conflict causes.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well worth the read. A thought provoking book about wartime Britain with startling comparisons to more recent events