There’s no doubt what’s newsworthy today. The Daily Mail trumpets the big battle over the Home Counties yesterday, the ‘most shattering defeat’ the Luftwaffe has ever experienced (1): The Air Ministry state that between 350 and 400 enemy aircraft were launched in two waves against London and south-east England. Of these no fewer than 175 […]
If it’s Sunday, this must be the Observer. Here are all the headlines from the main news page, page 7.
Let’s try to get a sense of the bigger picture through the various editorial pages of four newspapers published today. What is the meaning of the air raids? Will there be an invasion? What are the Germans trying to do? What does the future hold?
For the last two nights Bomber Command has been hitting hard at both the invasion ports — ‘their heaviest blows yet’ — as well as Hamburg and Berlin, says the front page of the Daily Mail: The Anhalter railway terminus was severely damaged following the previous day’s attack on the Potsdam stations. These stations are
Today I’ll take a break from the press and look at The Listener. This was a weekly publication of the BBC, a higher-brow companion to the Radio Times. Both carried listings of the week’s radio programmes, but whereas these are the main focus of the Radio Times, The Listener confines them to half a page
I’ve noted that for the past two days two major London papers — The Times and the Daily Mail — have not led with the bombing of the city. I don’t have today’s Mail to hand, but it’s the same for The Times today (‘Fresh R.A.F. blow at Berlin’, etc). But here is a provincial
As with the Daily Mail yesterday, The Times doesn’t give the bombing of London the biggest headlines (4). Those are reserved for the RAF’s bombing of enemy shipping in the Channel ports, which the Germans are concentrating in readiness for the invasion, and this is the lead story along with Bomber Command’s raid on Hamburg.
Daniel Swift. Bomber County. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2010. Partly an account of the attempt by the author — an English lit professor — to understand what happened to his grandfather, a Lancaster pilot shot down during a raid on Münster, as well as to the people he bombed, it also makes the argument that the
Saturday’s bombing of London isn’t quite as prominent on the front page of the Daily Mail as one might expect. There are a few small items about it (e.g. a panorama of London ablaze, taken from the top of Northcliffe House; a report from Italian radio that Londoners are ‘absolutely terrified’ by the raids) but
‘[T]he great daylight attack on London’ (7) yesterday evening came at an awkward time for the Observer. It was too late to do the opinion page over, and so it features editor J. L. Garvin’s thoughts on the destroyer deal and the battle of wills between Hitler and Churchill. So there is less than half
