Landscapes of Fear: Wartime London, 1939–1945

Abstract

As cartoonist Osbert Lancaster recalled in his autobiography, fear was central to the civilian experience of London during the Second World War. As the term People's War suggested, the British war effort depended not only on conscripted and directed labor and the rationing of con sumer goods but also on the fortitude of civilians, particularly those in urban areas, who were constant potential targets for German bombing raids. This article ex amines three narratives of civilian experience in wartime London?private diaries, psychologists' notes, and fiction?to reveal the hidden landscapes of fear in a city at war. During the Second World War, London was the primary and most dramatic stage where both personal and communal fears were played out. Londoners feared death, loss of property, injury, bereavement, and, on a broader scale, the loss of the war and the end of Britain. The 1940s thus saw the elaboration of older Victorian fears of London as a potential canker in the heart of Imperial Britain. British civilization was once again vulnerable to being weakened by the enemy within, and symptoms of the dreaded degeneracy were sought in expressions of