London can take it? The experience and representation of fear during the Second World War

Dr Rebecca Searle, Brighton

How do we think historically about the relationship between cultural representations and lived experiences? Wartime fear provides an ideal case study through which to consider this question because whilst ordinary people were understandably quite anxious at the prospect of being bombed, the state strove to regulate the emotional responses of the civilian population to aerial bombardment. This paper will use material from the Mass Observation Archive, war art, film and propaganda to highlight the dynamic relationship between cultural representations and individual emotional responses to bombing.