War Torn

The Manchester Blitz was relatively short, lasting two nights in December 1940, when around 1,000 people were killed and more than 3,000 injured in the city centre, Salford and the residential areas near Old Trafford. This book focuses on the reaction by the local and regional newspapers of Manchester, which was Britain's second press centre at the time, to this heavy bombing. The newspapers, The Manchester Guardian, Manchester Evening News and Evening Chronicle, were studied over an eight-week period before and after the Blitz and, according to these editions, their readers were unbowed by the death and destruction wrought by the Luftwaffe and had a steely determination to win the war. Contemporary writing, including individual diaries and reports from Mass Observation and Home Intelligence, tells a more complicated and nuanced story. This book explores the gap between reality and what appeared in print when Mancunians stopped being distant observers and became the story.