Blitz and its Legacy

Mark Clapson, University of Westminster, UK and Peter J. Larkham, Birmingham City University, UK Mark Clapson, Peter J. Larkham, Lindsey Dodd, Sue Wheatcroft, Shane Ewen, Robin Woolven, Susanne Cowan, Catherine Flinn, Neil Jackson, Jeffry M. Diefendorf, David Adams, Stephen Essex, Mark Brayshay, Hugh Clout, Junichi Hasegawa.

’This important collection, edited by two of the leading scholars in the field, presents a wide-ranging, inter-disciplinary series of chapters on the impact of Second World War bombing and its aftermath. Focusing principally on Britain it also encompasses chapters on France, Germany and Japan and follows the experience from bombing, through crisis response to replanning and reconstruction. This book is a must read for scholars of reconstruction planning and the politics of place of the mid-twentieth century.’ John Pendlebury, Newcastle University, UK ’This collection is a major addition to the literature on wartime bombing and its aftermath. It deals with emotional, welfare, short and long term physical and other dimensions, combining many valuable chapters that open new perspectives on the British experience in World War II with valuable insights from elsewhere in Europe and Japan. It will stimulate new interest in the whole question of wartime destruction and its role in producing social, political and institutional change.’ Stephen V. Ward, Oxford Brookes University, UK '... this fertile collection promises to provoke and stimulate much fresh thinking about the connections between the experience of the blitz and later reconstruction. It deserves a large and diverse readership.' LSE Review of Books 'The book’s unorthodox horizontal layout provides space for large reproductions of the detailed maps and aerial views of urban landscapes that are essential for a collection covering the the topic of the built environment in wartime and recovery'. Planning Perspectives 'I also particularly liked the way in which this edited collection consciously tried to move beyond the confines of wartime London by considering how other cities and peoples-both in the UK and elsewhere around the world-were affected by, and responded to, the destruction wrought by the aerial bombardments of the Second World War'. Cercles

• Contents: The Blitz, its experiences, its consequences, Mark Clapson and Peter J. Larkham; La ville éventrée: or, how bombing turned the city inside out, Lindsey Dodd; Holiday camps, castles and stately homes: the residential option for the evacuation of disabled children during World War II, Sue Wheatcroft; A service forged in the flames: the Blitz, wartime fire-fighting and the National Fire Service, Shane Ewen; Between destruction and reconstruction: London’s Debris Clearance and Repair Organisation 1939-1945, Robin Woolven; The people’s peace: the myth of wartime unity and public consent for town planning, Susanne Cowan; Reconstruction constraints: political and economic realities, Catherine Flinn; Destruction and dispersal: the Blitz and the ’break-up’ of working-class London, Mark Clapson; Tradition and modernity: architecture in Japan after Hiroshima, Neil Jackson; Reconstruction civic authority in post-war Germany, Jeffry M. Diefendorf; Bold planning, mixed experiences: the diverse fortunes of post-war Birmingham, David Adams and Peter J. Larkham; Planning the reconstruction of war-damaged Plymouth, 1941-1961: devising and defending a modernisation agenda, Stephen Essex and Mark Brayshay; Destruction, revival and reconstruction across Alsace and Lorraine, 1939-1960, Hugh Clout; Problems of blitz reconstruction in Japan: the case of Sendai, Junichi Hasegawa; Index.