Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Father Christmas battles through the Blitz

Jerry White’s vivid history of war-torn London includes descriptions of children’s Christmas parties organised across the capital by the ARP in 1940

Children enjoying a Christmas party in a London bomb shelter in 1940. [Getty Images] 
issue 11 December 2021

When the shrill air raid sirens blared their familiar warning cries over the city at 6.01 p.m. on 29 December 1940, Londoners thought they knew what was coming. Life under siege had taken on a strange sense of normality. They had been bombed systematically by the Luftwaffe for months and fully expected this to resume with ferocity after a brief lull over the Christmas period.

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