Dan Snow's History Hit - St Paul's, the Blitz and THAT photo

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

80 years ago today the Second Great Fire of London was unleashed by sustained German bombing during one of the fiercest nights of the Blitz. On this podcast Dan goes on a tour around the City of London with Clive Harris looking at how Luftwaffe bombs reshaped the city. Dan also talks to Dr Tom Allbeson, a Lecturer at Cardiff University, about how the iconic photo of St Paul's was taken and how it became a symbol of Britain's war effort.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. 80 years ago this year, during the Battle of Britain, the first German bombs dropped on London. It was the start of the so-called Blitz, a campaign of aerial bombing

launched by the German Luftwaffe, well, actually with quite indistinct aims, but probably to just knock the British out of the war or certainly punish them terribly for their refusal to make terms with Adolf Hitler. On the night of the 29th and 30th of December 1940, 80 years ago when this podcast is first broadcast, it was something like the 114th night of the Blitz and there was a massive attack on the area around St Paul's Cathedral. In the morning, in the early hours, hundreds of buildings were completely destroyed. Acres and acres of one of the great cities of the world lay completely devastated in ruins. In the early hours of the 30th of December, a photographer called Herbert Morrison climbed onto the roof of Northcliffe House, the offices of the Daily Mail newspaper,

onto the roof of Northcliffe House, the offices of the Daily Mail newspaper, close to Fleet Street. He looked towards St Paul's Cathedral and snapped a picture. The picture showed the dome of St Paul's surrounded by dark smoke, swirling smoke, buildings on fire, gutted, destroyed, and instantly became one of the most recognis recognizable photographs ever taken. The iconic image of the Blitz used by both sides as we'll hear for propaganda purposes. On the anniversary of that gigantic German raid, on the anniversary of that photo being taken, I walked the streets of London with an expert guide Clive Harris who I've worked with before about the Gallipoli campaign but he's also one of the great experts on the bombing of London. He showed me the great sways of the city that had been destroyed and rebuilt, but importantly, the few bits and pieces that have survived, obviously, including the mighty

cathedral itself. And he explained to me how the survival of the cathedral was not the hand of God or fate, but a decision taken by politicians, churchmen, and owed everything to the extraordinarily brave men and women who were on duty that night, tasked with saving the iconic building. This podcast is an extended interview with Clive. It also features Dr. Tom Alberson, who teaches history at Cardiff University. He talked me through the importance of that photo. That's this podcast. On our TV channel, on our sibling TV channel, you can go and watch the documentary that I made with Clive around the city of London. Because it's Boxing Day, because January's on the horizon, we've got our special annual sale. So please head over

to historyhit.tv, use the code Januaryuary january and you get your first three months for 80 off craziness so please head over and do that you can watch the christmas truce film you can watch a brilliant film about the the revolt in haiti at the end of the 18th century that saw the establishment of the first freed slave black republic in the western hemisphere and you can also watch this film with clive and me trucking around the cathedral and the city of london so yep go and use the code january in the meantime everyone here's my conversation with clive harris and dr tom alberson enjoy clive thank you for bringing me to this amazing viewpoint on top of the Tate Modern, looking

out at the City of London. What we have seen here, just give me the absolute highlight if we'd been up here in 1940. Well, Dan, what we've got here is the centre of the British Empire. This is the beaten heart of it economically, architecturally, culturally. This whole area would have been a vibrant mass of people and it was absolutely essential that regardless of what was going on in the skies above that this place kept moving. We're looking at the square mile behind us here and I think the reason we're looking at the square mile is because

we're going to be looking at the events of December 1940 by which time London was in its fourth month of pretty much continual air raids so So, you know, starting from the 7th of September, this had become a major target for the Luftwaffe, hoping to break the back of British morale. But by the time we get to December, it'd been a slight lull, to be fair. We'd had heavy raids up until now, but I don't think Londoners were prepared for what was about to happen to them on the night of the 29th.

Right, let's talk about that fateful night 80 years ago. First of all, tell me, what would have been here? You mentioned skyscrapers, they wouldn't have been here I take it? No, no, no, very low-lying sort of skyscraper. In fact St Paul's would have dominated, it kind of dominates today but nowhere near as much as it would have done and it's surrounded by those ring of wren churches and the more you look the more you see 20 plus, 19 of which are going to be badly damaged on the night the 29th the other big factor of the city were the livery halls and over 30 of the livery halls badly damaged on that night and so it opens up the landscape for post-war rebuild reminder of it

today you can see the towers of the barbican there which is pretty much grown up out of the the ruins of the city as it as it uh ended. By the time of the 30th of December, this whole area would have been a smouldering mass. Whilst the raid was over in three hours, the firefighters were working for 10, 11, 12 hours trying to get things under control. So that night in December, what were conditions like? Was it a clear night? It was a good bomber's moon. It was a very low tide. In fact, you had to get your water, you had to go down onto the beaches, and we've got a bit of it today, to actually get the water and then pump it up to deal with it. The most important thing that's sometimes overlooked is

there was a wind coming from the southwest, which means it's blowing north-easterlies, and that means that any fires that started, the debris from that fire and the tinder and the flames are pushed out over the city, expanding it. And once that becomes a firestorm, when they come and meet on these these big boulevards that were built after the Great Fire as natural fire breaks, when the fires meet on those big central positions, you can see it's out of control. And 183 incidents within the square mile in a six hour period. So yeah let's just quickly remind me, so basically you've got two kinds of bombs haven't you? You've got little bombs, it's just what they're

just really hot and they just start fires everywhere and there's loads of them then you've got that big bombs, famous bombs that you see on the films and things that actually blow buildings up. That's absolutely right. The Luftwaffe by this stage is becoming frustrated in its ability to flatten the cities, and that's partly because they don't have the bomb-carrying capacity. If the Luftwaffe had had B-17s and Lancasters, we'd have been in a lot more trouble in 1940. But, you know, Heinkel 111, the largest aircraft,

its payload is fairly low for a tactical bomber to come in. So they mix it up a bit. Incendiary bombs stand about so high they're dropped in a bread basket, about 180 of these in each aircraft, and they will just tip up the bread basket and out would scuttle 20, 30 of these things. And importantly, they're designed to go through roof tiles and lodge themselves in roofs. And when the magnesium fires take hold, that's when you've got a real problem. So somewhere like St Paul's as we'll see there are so many rooftops and galleries because

of Wren's design that firefighters are continually trying to find little areas like we're on today. You know how do you get to a balcony like this if there's an incendiary bomb when really you're looking at all the other parts of the building as well. That's then reinforced by a series of high explosive bombs. There were many types of bombs. The most common one was 50 kilograms. The Germans were finding that these things were not going deep enough into the surface or they were going too far deep. What they needed to do was get them to detonate on the surface. They put a little ring on the top so they could detonate on impact. They still wanted to cause more superficial damage upstairs as opposed to structural damage downstairs in these buildings so

parachute mines was another incident delayed action ones so if you had a parachute mine hanging in amongst the sort of telephone wires around buildings the area could be sealed off for 48 hours which becomes a real hindrance because one important things about the Blitz is we can't all take shelter, the city has got to keep moving because it's the economic powerhouse of the empire. Every time I get a view of St Paul's from a place like this, I just think of that photo. It's just one of the most famous photos ever taken and it was taken that night. Absolutely, iconic photograph actually.

The guy Herbert Mason who was working for the Daily Mail at the time, he had quite a busy night wandering around and it was towards the end of the evening that he went back to the roof of the Daily Mail building just opposite us actually in Tudor Street and very lucky just a glimpse where the clouds parted and there was the Dome of St Paul's for him to take that one shot and they estimate the exposure time would have been absolutely minimal and of course being in black and white makes it all the more evocative really because colour footage was not only expensive and hard to get hold

of but was actually tried discouraged by the censor, they didn't want colour photograph. When I was a kid every time I saw that photo I thought oh isn't that amazing, like you know it's luck or God protected St Paul's Cathedral. It was a sort of religious significance. And then when I learned more about it, actually, people, the government protected St Paul's Cathedral. It was a decision that was made. It was very much a decision that was made. And also it should be to the credit of the civil defences that are trained and trained and trained again.

You know, and the volunteer firefighters that were on the roofs that night did an incredible job to keep St Paul's alive. Right in the middle of that raid is when they get the message from Winston Churchill to say St Paul's is to be saved at all costs. Now, I don't know how welcome that would have been at the time, because they were doing their best, but we really put high priority on this. And, of course, the effect of that is all of the other churches and buildings that were lost that same night. But in the morning, St Paul's stood. The photograph was across the media. Even the German press were reporting it for different reasons, saying St Paul's had fallen.

But it gives a lift to the British people because in America, to meet with their news lines, they'd reported, you know, London has fallen, St Paul's has been destroyed. And then, of course, once the flames went out and she still stood there, it was really the first time Londoners fell in love with this this building clive and i climbed down from the roof of the museum and went to stand on a bridge over the river thames so of course the river is the reason that london's here

it's the artery of london but it was also the way by which the germans were able to navigate their way in i guess absolutely i mean no river no london it's you know from when the romans first crossed it it was an important feature to the city grew up around it square mile itself is in londonium as we know and you know during the war this place very hard to black out so a silver ribbon guiding those bombers onto their targets using various things as target indicators cannon street station is one of those that he suggested the Germans would be looking for. But at the same time, it offers us our only realistic chance of water supply. So being able to pump water from the Thames up onto where the fires are taking hold,

really, really quite integral to being able to fight these fires. So the Thames is bringing the destruction upon London, but also potentially bringing salvation. Sirens went at six, and it was about 6.15 that the first sort of bombs started to land, largely behind us. I should mention, you know, the 200-odd casualties in London killed that night. Only nine are in the square mile. The vast majority happened over my shoulder there in south-east London. But this river, at the time, you'd have had the low moon bouncing off of the river, a bit like you can see today the low moon bouncing off of the river a bit like you can see today the searchlights illuminating the sky you know crossing criss

crossing each other again bouncing off this river kind of lights up the whole of the city and this raid took place during the lowest tide we'd seen for a long while and that added to it alongside that some of the economic cuts that were essential for the fire services meant that those copper gauzes so reliable been replaced by wicker gauzes on the end of their pumps and they clogged up with a silt so your pump would stop and people would have to come down and try and clean out all that mud and that silt and then you know get this thing pumping again now if you're at the sharp end on the end of a hose and that hose goes limp you know you've got to worry in time until we manage to get more water more water

get it running again. It's low tide so the water is very the water level is very low down see what you're using all that extra hose trying to get into the little trickle of Thames at the bottom and often pump to pump to pump so this might be three relays to get it up to the front some of the younger members of the fire service 15 16, 16 year old guys that had volunteered as messengers or whatever, are being employed as pump operators, desperately trying to keep these things going so you can get water. And as we see when we get to Fire Brigade Memorial, that's the symbol they've used, is them on the end of that branch and reliant on these pumps getting the water up to them. So what is the plan that night? What are they trying to hit? Is it just cause as much damage as possible?

Not really a specific target. I think the whole city was the target. This was the heart of the British Empire. If they could strike here, it would damage the economy of the UK. It would damage the morale of the local people. And it would send out a signal to the neutral that London was in trouble. And at a time when the UK or Britain was the only free part of Europe. Clive, even today, that building just dominates the

surrounding area doesn't it? It must have been the sort of focal point in the 1940s. Everyone would have seen it from the city wouldn't they? Ah it sort of towered above the skyline you know the dome itself is I think it's one of the largest domes in Europe right but at the time it was also perhaps the weak link in St Paul's defence, because we see it as like a shiny metal dome. In fact, that's a very thin lead roof, and it's actually held in place by lots of wooden timber structures. Now, we spoke about incendiary bombs.

If they get through the lead and in amongst the wood, the whole of this could actually collapse under the weight of the cross on the top. So it's hard to imagine that St Paul's Cathedral, one of the most beautiful buildings in Europe, was flirting with complete destruction that night. Planning. It's all down to planning. And the fire watchers here had actually been in existence since the First World War. So they'd gone back to that and looked at how we defended it in the First World War, how we were going to do it in the Second World War. And it needed lots and lots of isolated positions where there were water on supply, sandbags, and sand itself to put out fires.

These guys are trained for this a lot. However, nothing could quite prepare them for the events of the 29th of December. So 6.15, bombs overhead. What did they drop first? Incendiary bombs. No big explosions, that's to come later. But these were small little incendiary bombs that were hitting roofs, falling into corners, falling into little corridors, squares. Most of these firefighters now were having to fight individual fires. And there's lots of these, they're small, they burn very very very hot, they're just trying to start fires.

Yeah, magnesium and you know they're almost silent when they land, so it's a visual thing as opposed to an audible thing. They will bounce off a rooftop, explode into life and you've got a high temperature magnesium fire burning. So here we are at the Firefighters Memorial. It commemorates people from all over the country but these names at the top here are those that come from London and then they added a few years ago from across the country. So for the 29th of December, it was 12 firefighters were killed. Only three of those in the square mile. Most of them out in the suburbs,

South East London and the East End. One of the guys killed on that first night here, James Daly. There he is, yeah. Yeah, so I like to bring them alive, really. He actually lived half a mile from where I live, in Hertfordshire. He'd come in from Old Welling

and was a volunteer firefighter. And it was up on the city road where him and his oppo were both killed in a collapsing building. So hang on you say volunteer have they got a day job and then at night they're traveling to do this? You've got to think more like the army reserves really when they joined the AFS they hadn't come from a firefighting background necessarily a lot of the people that went into the auxiliary fire service were people that were interested in the arts if they were pacifists and didn't want to directly be combatant in the war, this was their way of still taking part in the war effort. A really good one on this, Dan, is they need

to expand the amount of fire appliances. So for that to take place, you needed people who had their own vehicles and who knew their way around London. Who are you going to call? Black cab drivers. Most of these fire appliances were black cabs driven by the taxi driver, ladder on the roof, bell in the window and a trailer pump on the back operating four or five of them and that's how they would deploy. Battleship grave taxis, incredible story. So these are not professional firefighters? No, some of them that would get to work with regular fire stations would be called red riders because they got to go on the side of a big, shining red fire appliance at the start of the war. By 1940, everything was painted industrial grey for various reasons.

But an auxiliary fire serviceman, you know, very, very proud of his role in the war. And it's only in August of 1941 they become the National Fire Service. But at the time of the Blitz, it's the AFS. And so we've got James Daly here. He's killed when a building collapsed on him. Yeah, sadly he's wounded when the building collapsed. It takes two days for him to die in St Bart's Hospital. Certain London hospitals will set aside priority for civil defence workers,

St Bart's being the one in this side of the city. So James and his oppo were both killed that night. And perhaps the most famous, infamous guy to have died here, we can see is Sidney Holder. Holder, you'll all be familiar with the painting of the wall collapsing on them that you see in the Imperial War Museum. And three firemen killed across the city of London, all commemorated on this memorial.

The memorial itself, look at these guys, cooling water up from the Thames, desperate to pour it down onto St Paul's. We're left with the memorial itself, look at these guys, cooling water up from the Thames, desperate to pour it down onto St Paul's. We're left with the memorial today, but actually one of the plans post-war here was that great character Lutyens drew up a plan to make this one large open memorial garden with a great big esplanade and a new bridge. Before the Millennium Bridge, this is how it would have been, but the budget wasn't there and those plans are now only drawings, I'm afraid. bridge this is how it would have been but the budget wasn't there and those plans are now only drawings i'm afraid so as that raid unfolds these firefighters have been deployed just across acres of ground here just individual battles with little little incendiary bombs so one of the things you

would have seen here certainly in the morning after the raid was the amount of fire hoses that were just laying across roads you'd almost be tripping up over them you know you're meant to make do and mend at the end of your fire shift you pack up and go away but these crews are relieved in situ some of them been on duty for up to 12 hours a new crew takes over there's bits of pipe laying around hose pipe everywhere generators have failed pumps have failed it would have resembled a battlefield. Were all of these buildings around us basically on fire? On fire, a big inferno, the whole of this skyline would have been lit up, 19 of these wren churches are going to be gutted that night and that's before we get to the warehouses and most importantly Paternoster Row where the books are, you know kindling for the

Luftwaffe fires. So they've had a few months to prepare for this but this is just cobbled together using civilian resources. Yeah it's and they're overstretched you know there are far too many fires for the amount of crews able to deal with the incidents so the whole thing's being coordinated from the Guildhall that's the control centre there and every single phone is, all the lights are lit up, and people are having to wait. And even the St Lawrence Jewelry, which is right next to the Guildhall, have to wait for 20, 30 minutes before the fire brigade,

and so it's up to the individual fire watchers to look after it. Now, these are the real volunteers. These are the guys that work in the offices, and if your office place has more than 30 employees, you have to provide a fire picket every evening to stop fire spreading so the fire watchers who end up fighting the fires as well these are check they've been they've been working all day and now they're serving a night shift absolutely yeah it's fascinating the long hours that they you know they had to work and

i've often thought about this whole idea of commuting into war you know you come in on your normal train you go to your office if your office is still there, and then at the end of your shift when your office is still there, you volunteer to stay on the rooftops in case the blitz is coming, and then when you go home, you don't know where your house is standing. So this whole idea of, you know, from home to work, home to work, and the long, long hours fighting these fires as fire watchers. So about an hour and a half after the first bombs drop,

this whole area is a ring of fire around St Paul's. How does that building survive? Well, let's go and find out. Let's do it. So, Dan, here you can see also that it wasn't a male-dominated environment. You know, you also had women played their role in the fire service. They were either reporting agents in the control centres, taking the calls, dispatching the units,

or some of them up level, you know, street level as well, working as dispatch riders. You had Boy Scouts as messengers, running messages for people. You know, this was a real community effort here, and everyone played their role. And this is the list of female firefighters that were killed throughout the war. Clive walked me to the ruins of Christchurch Greyfriars a few hundred meters north. You know Clive very embarrassing I've walked past here a hundred times I've never

fully clocked that this is a smashed up former church but now a garden. It's wonderful isn't it I mean firstly it gives you the impression of what damage the blitz caused to these churches around here at the end of the war there were so many of these burnt out they had to make a decision about which ones they kept which ones they turned into peaceful gardens and in the end three or four of them were turned into places like this for city workers to eat their sandwiches probably not aware of you know what surrounds them like yourself but this was completely raced to the ground as you can see only the tower survived as many of the wren towers did and it's right in the middle between well guildhall's just around the corner behind a st bart's hospital very important if you're a civil defense worker and you're injured you were taken there as a priority so this had to keep

running throughout all of the raids to to tend with the people that were working on the ground that got injured. And then in the shadow of St Paul's, you can see the cross just behind us. And between us and there is Paternoster Row that we'll learn about in a while, which was probably the largest fire in this area. This area here, where we are, just to the Norfolk Cathedral, was almost a desert landscape. And in fact, it wasn't long before they were flooding basements deliberately to use as emergency water supplies for the fire service should the Luftwaffe come back again.

Then we crossed the road and headed back towards the cathedral. Well, that's Paternoster Square as it was now. It was Paternoster Row and it was home to most of the large publishing houses in London. They estimate that nearly five million books were destroyed that night in that square. Just in here? Just in here. So Hitchcock and Williams and Company, good example, pretty much where you see the archway now, that was only moved here in recent times, the whole building was destroyed.

It was a famous building because it was in that building that the YMCA was formed. So even before the war, Americans would come across to visit the birthplace of the YMCA as a movement. But it now belonged to Hitchcock's and Williams. They had their own fire team fighting the fires, but even they couldn't save the building that night. Once that paper and those books took hold, this whole area was destroyed. Then after that, they flooded the basements, as I said, they became emergency water supplies. This area was cleared of its rubble. We know that some of that rubble was actually used and recycled

into the Mulberry Harbour that we used at Normandy, as if to say, you bomb our cities, we're going to use it to build a platform back into Europe. So if we were standing here the morning after the raid, it would have just been desolation. It was such a battlefield scene here that prior to the Dieppe raids some of the Canadian troops trained live firing exercise on this ground as how to fight in and out of buildings. And then the final thing I should mention about this square is that in just after the war

immediately after the war they cleared it again they put up the grandstands and they actually had a miniature Olympics here involving the civil defences, the armed forces, prisoners of war and various refugees. It was almost a blueprint for London hosting the Olympics in 1948, it occurred here in 1945 at the end of the war. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed.

We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his

absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Finally, we made our way to the cathedral itself. So right up along the outside wall of St Paul's. Can you hear the choir? I think we can hear the St Paul's choir.

We can, we can. The St Paul's choir school just in the grounds here of course. And they had to be evacuated. The actual choir for the Blitz period went down to the West Country and when you read about it it was said that they didn't really feel St Paul's was open again until that choir was brought back post-war and once again this whole area echoed with the sound of choir people singing. Like it is now. Absolutely. But also we've got the damage here haven't we? This is classic shrapnel damage not caused by incendiary bombs but a number of high explosive bombs that were dropped on the evening or maybe

later in the war and this is what happened shell splinters caused this i've brought some shrapnel along with us so you can see exactly what it it looks at i've got a couple of parts there if you feel how sharp that is terrifying you know and that flying off a building like that is exactly what would make that sort of damage we're lucky that they're here today because these are effectively honorable scars of the cathedral you. This tells the story of it. But white-hot flying around, not very nice at all. So these would have been scything through the air, white-hot, they'd have been dangerous to buildings and obviously mortally dangerous to people.

If they can do that to stonework, you can imagine it's quite horrific, isn't it? So although this building does bear scars, they're pretty superficial. The rest of this area was completely levelled. How did this old girl survive? You could say there was a little bit of luck there was certainly a lot of hard work involved. Remember we mentioned all of the the fire watchers that were due to come on duty. Well in fact this raid occurred before they were due to start their shift. So it really relied on people saying this looks like this is a heavy one I'll get down the cathedral and help out where I can. They were based all around the different

parts of the cathedral inside and as the incendiary started to hit and remember there are 28 different incidents just on the St Paul's itself. They split up in small groups dealt with individual isolated incidents. The very first one they dealt with, the water mains stopped. So panic ensued, that's okay they got dry risers. The very next one they dealt with, the dry risers stopped as well. They must have felt that everything was against them this evening but luckily the guy who was in coordinating the whole of the defence of St Paul's had arranged for fire buckets, pails of water and you literally had to throw your bucket of water over

whatever it was, run down refill it and go and get another one. A lot of hard manual work. So actually we just got to imagine all that night, teams of people every time an incendiary gets wet somewhere, water's going on it, sand's going on it, they're dealing with constant fires on this building. They were, 28 different incendiary devices bouncing off the roof landing in the gardens behind me and getting caught up in these little sort of square alcoves at one stage there were four or five different fires burning inside the cathedral itself individual incidents the one that caused the most concern way up in the rafters no one could get to it if that started burning away at that ancient oak as we know the whole thing may have collapsed now by some sort of miracle it just dislodged itself before anyone got to it fell down onto the

flagstone for in and then it goes out it dissipates the surrounding area is on fire there's bombs hitting this building it must have been dangerous for the for the people on on duty oh it was dangerous not if you know head for heights for one thing some of domes, when you're up there on a bit of rope, it's very dangerous indeed. But there was an added complication this night because the Germans continued innovating the way they would deliver their ordnance. And on this occasion, it's one of the first times

where one in ten of the incendiary bombs had an anti-personnel device that meant if you approached it, it's likely to explode. It's almost like a lottery. You didn't know if you had one of those or not. So you had to urge a bit of caution as well as the need to just put the thing out. So if it hadn't been for the bravery, the skill

and the speed of the people protecting this building, St Paul's could have gone that night. Absolutely. And had we lost St Paul's, then maybe that might have tipped the balance for the morale of the country. As it is, we knew we woke up the next morning, St Paul's was here. then maybe that might have tipped the balance for the morale of the country. As it is, we knew, we woke up the next morning, St Paul's was here, and London can carry on.

London had endured one of the worst nights of the Blitz. But hard that is to imagine, it could have been worse. This Blitz here had caused more damage than the whole of the 1666 Great Fire of London. In areas of acreage of how much was destroyed in the city, most of it the area where we are today. So had they lost control? No. Had they run out of resources? Yes. One of the key indicators here, though, is when the all clear sounded, many of the people involved on the ground didn't know. They carried on fighting the fires. The bombers had left, but their job was still to fight

those fires and that's where we get back to that situation where what would have occurred had the heavy bombers arrived in another wave but of course as we know weather closed in and that never occurred land a viking longship on ireland shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought

to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Every week. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. After my tour with the excellent Clive, i want to learn more about that photo the man to talk to

is dr tom alberson a lecturer in cultural history at the university of cardiff wow it's one of the most famous photos in british history isn't it i think it is i think it is i mean it's really interesting i teach history and photography and every year I do a little sort of impromptu survey of students. And it's interesting to see the ebb and flow of familiarity with the photo. So I think people with a foot firmly in the 20th century are very familiar with the photo. And I think if you walk into any newsagent in a railway station any day of the year, you're likely to see something on the stands with this photo on the cover. But it seems to me that as I speak to more and more 20-year-olds,

they're less and less aware of this photo, which is an interesting discussion in its own right. But yeah, I would agree. It's one, if not the, most famous photo in British history. or if not the most famous photo in British history. Now, give us, the podcast listeners, the health warning that you give to all your students on the first day of that wonderful history and photography course. We think that photographs are fact congealed onto, well, paper, whatever. In fact, of course, they are often messed with.

And let's come on to where this photo is. But in general, how should we be careful about using photographs in history? Absolutely. Well, in that first lesson every year, I used the same quotation from Bertolt Brecht, who said in 1930, so even before this photo was taken, that the camera is just as capable of lying as the typewriter. was taken that the camera is just as capable of lying as the typewriter. So a photograph, although it strikes us as coming unmediated from the world to our eyes, is just as constructed as a piece of text. The way in which it's framed, the way in which it's selected, the way in which,

even if it's not mucked about with, whether in the print room or on Photoshop, the way in which even if it's not mucked about with whether in the print room or on photoshop the way in which it is made makes it just as capable of of deception as any piece of rhetoric or any painting on a gallery wall so taken on the 29th and published on the 31st on the front cover of the Daily Mail and described as war's greatest picture in that first publication. So before anybody's seen it, it's already being presented as an iconic photo, if you like, before that term really had sort of common parlance. And so I think that's really interesting in and of itself and that speaks to the importance of that building before this photograph was taken you know so you've got to remember that at the time this was the major landmark on the London skyline now if you go to London you'd be hard-pressed to

pick it out from all the other buildings but then it was the very icon the very symbol of the city. So its survival was very powerful and important in and of itself. And that power and importance was sort of channeled through Herbert Mason's photograph. So he was the person up there on the roof on the night of the 29th using quite an old-fashioned camera for the time, a quarter glass plate van neck camera. And he took this and maybe at least a couple of other photographs. But the one selected for the cover of the Daily Mail is the one we all know. And there are really interesting ways in which that first publication kind of set the tone for other uses of the photograph. So Mason's account is given in the text that runs alongside the photo. He talks about how, you know, he waited until a wind parted the clouds and he

could see the dome. So there's a kind of witnessing element there that's important to giving the photo its kind of veracity, its sense of authenticity and objectivity. But at the same time, I think this is really interesting, Mason describes it as a symbol in the inferno. So he's already aware that this picture that he's only just created will have real sort of cultural impact. And, you know, when I'm teaching those students about critical approaches to photographs I use that phrase symbol in the inferno to sort of try and tease apart how we we take something as an unmediated picture of reality but actually it's you know layered with loads of prior associations like the building had you know this building constructed after the first

great fire of london so already a symbol of rebuilding um when it was first made in the 1600s so it's a record but a symbol at the same time and i think that's really interesting and you can see that play out in different ways in the many publications that the photograph was used in during the war. And so it appears on the cover of various photo books, one called Grim Glory. And any person with a budding interest in photo history might be aware of that book, which also features loads of fantastic, surrealistic imagery of the Blitz by Lee Miller. And that book, with Mason's photo on its cover, also appeared in the US under a different title. So very quickly, this photograph is being disseminated across the UK and over the Atlantic

to symbolise, to represent Britain's steadfast resolve at this moment and importantly this moment before the US has joined the war as well. So it's key that the photograph also appears in Life magazine in early 1941. So it's appealing to, it's addressing a UK audience but it's also being used to communicate with potential allies in this fight against the Third Reich. Was the photo also used on the Axis side as well? It was, yeah, somehow, and I haven't figured out quite how it journeyed to the continent. It appeared in the Berliner Illustrator Zeitung in January 1941. And it was totally framed in quite an opposite way, you know. So when it appears in the Daily Mail and also the Illustrated London News,

the building and its survival is shown as a, or framed in the words that appear alongside it, as a symbol of civilisation and the endurance of right against wrong. Whereas obviously, they have to put a different spin on it when it appears in the popular German photo magazine. And the emphasis is placed on the smoke, on the fire, on the endangerment of the city of London. So they mention, obviously, the centre of British finance next door. And so, yeah, it's got a very different inflection when it's used in Germany. It's funny, I've been looking at it recently,

having not seen it for a few years, and I'm now struck by the, less by the glory of St Paul's standing proud, like the icon of, like that, the sort of totem of empire. I'm now struck by, oh my God, the rest of that city is completely smashed to bits. Absolutely, yeah. So there's real tension in the photograph between the smoke, the dark, heavy smoke, and the lightness on the dome. And so, you know, in the tonal qualities of the photo, but also the contrast between the foreground and the background. In the background, the dome stands proud and, you know, enduring.

But in the foreground, all the buildings there are totally, you know, open to the elements. They're sort of empty facades. You can see the fires burning in the windows of what are either, you know, domestic properties or commercial properties. Yeah, the original publication in the mail, though, cropped the photograph quite significantly so that the emphasis is heavily on the dome of St. Paul's and less so on the facade. and less so on the facade. And when that photo is used in different debates in wartime and the immediate post-war period in Britain, you get different croppings, depending on what emphasis people want to place on, you know, the question of wartime destruction and the question of post-war reconstruction. So yeah, depending on which version you see, there's a different sort of emphasis. And again, that goes back to this question of, you know, taking a critical

approach to photography, despite how it might appeal to us as something objective and authentic. Tom, you start this conversation talking about the students I hadn't thought to ask, but I mean, what do they make of that photo? Is this ancient history for them? You know, I was born closer to that photo than to today. Yes, I think we might have been both born around the same time. I was born in 1978. Same, buddy, same. You've aged much better than I have. But anyway, so we were born closer to that photo than we were to today.

Students of yours, do they just look at that as something that's quite remote? What's the effect of it on them? There's an interesting distinction between students who are familiar with it and students who aren't. And obviously, we've got, you know, students coming from all sorts of nations across the globe. So you're more likely to be familiar with it as a British and dare I say an English student than you are if you're coming as a Chinese student to the university or whatever it is. But then amongst those that are familiar with it and those that aren't familiar with it, I think there's a sort of split. So those who are familiar with it don't necessarily see it as ancient history. I think, I'm assuming this, but I think their familiarity with it

comes from some sort of family connection to that history. So that history has already been kind of mediated or conveyed to them through grandparents or great-grandparents who have some form of connection to the events of the Second World War. And so they've seen that photograph and they can imagine, you know, relatives at the same time experiencing similar things. And so it doesn't seem that other, that distant, that strange. Whereas students who aren't familiar with the photograph maybe do see it as slightly more archaic and distant and hard to imagine. But it's really quite interesting if you bring in some of the historical publications to the lecture or the seminar room, how very quickly people sort of can connect the photo to the history and to the events and to individual experience and everyday lives. So, you know,

there's loads of photo books that are issued in wartime and in the post-war period that document the destruction of the Blitz in Britain, in London, but also in other major cities of the UK. And if you hand students those publications and you get them to look through them and to imagine what audience would purchase or share or preserve on the family bookshelf these photo books, to what we do in taking photos on our phone and storing them, sharing albums online, looking at those newspaper before and after comparisons that you get all the time. I saw one today about Wuhan during the lockdown and now. So yeah, very quickly you can jump that gap of 80 years between then and now. And the materiality that's sort of, you know, holding something in your hand seems to make the difference. You mentioned a few answers ago that it was important post-war as well. That struck me,

that was very interesting. I wasn't expecting that at all. How was it used? Yeah, so as well as anybody else, you'll be aware of the power and the vibrancy of debates in wartime Britain about what we're going to do after the war, about the reconstruction, about how the future must be different from the past. So obviously, as Britain is experiencing war, it's also experiencing the aftermath of the First World War, which, you know, was only a generation previous. And so despite the threat and the peril and the uncertainty of the outcome, there's a really strong debate in wartime Britain about how after the conflict, the nation will rebuild differently. And that's partly a morale building exercise to, you know, look ahead to the

future and manage the fear and the threat of the present through hopeful forward thinking. But it's also a longer term debate about social justice, about the sort of inequalities, economic and everyday sort of domestic settings, all the sort of challenges of slums, overcrowding, pollution that people had been facing in the interwar period, compounded by the impacts of the Great Depression. All of this was central to the terms of debate about reconstruction after the war. And reconstruction took on a real depth of meaning. It wasn't just about rebuilding the buildings, the cities, it was about rebuilding the relationship between citizens and the state. And so you get that famous Labour

manifesto from 1945, Let Us Face the Future, which says, we need the Dunkirk and the Blitz spirit sustained over a number of years. So in 1945, you get what's been termed the spirit of 45, this idea of, you know, a national rebuilding effort that will distinguish the post-war period from what came before it through loads of efforts around education, also around the establishment of the National Health Service in 1948, obviously. The construction of the welfare state in that post-war period is a result of that wartime debate around reconstruction. And if you look for it, you can see that photo of St Paul's by Herbert Mason in many of the publications that cover this. So just one example is a little pamphlet from, I think, 1942 by Ralph Tubbs called Living in Cities. And it has that photo by Mason

of St. Paul's and the title given to it is The New Opportunity. And he uses an uncropped version of that photo so you get the real sort of balance between the dome and the ruined buildings in the foreground and drawing on the associations with Wren's master plan for rebuilding London in the 1600s Tubbs makes the argument that London can be rebuilt again in a way that will serve the people who live there far better, far more equitably than has been the case in previous decades. And so, you know, housing projects, new tower blocks that give people amenities that they hadn't had before in living in Victorian tenements, these in part take their meaning from that wartime debate and from that wartime visual culture in which Mason's photograph was so

prominent. So there's ways in which that photo, although it's a photo of a historic building are used to turn to the future, to look ahead and imagine a new Britain that is as powerful, resplendent, monumental as St Paul's Cathedral. Well, a huge thank you to Clive Harris and Dr Tom Alberson. I hope you've enjoyed this anniversary walk around London remembering one of the city's most terrifying nights. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours,

our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished and liquidated. Hope you enjoyed the podcast.

Just before you go, bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review. Purge yourself. Give it a glowing review.

I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather. Laura the Jungle out there. And I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity.

Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. you