Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain
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- Episode
- Ep1 - Martindale Road
- Broadcast Info
- 2017 (59 mins)
- Description
- During the blitz over 450,000 bombs dropped on Britain and every bomb has its own story. This series examines the specific effect of four bombs, from their initial impact on individual lives, right through to their wider consequences for the Second World War, and all the way to the present day. Each episode begins with a single bomb in a single street in a single city - London, Hull, Clydebank and Bristol.
Across the series incredible personal testimony, gut-wrenching memoirs, and the meticulous records kept at the time, provide a visceral and terrifying account of the blitz that directly connects with the human experience of the bombs. As survivors and relatives attest, these bombs touched the lives of everyone and created a legacy we still all live with today.
Episode one follows a bomb that fell on Martindale Road in the East End of London on the first night of the Blitz. Stan Harris and Norman Pirie were boys in 1940, but their memories of that fateful night are crystal clear.
Initially there’s relief as this bomb remains unexploded and Martindale Road residents are evacuated. Sandra Belchamber’s grandparents were caught up in the chaos and she explains their fortuitous decision to leave London and to head for Kent. But Judy Gregory’s grandmother, uncle, aunt and cousins put their faith in the authorities and head to a local school to wait for buses to take them to safety. The buses do not come and they and hundreds others become a sitting target for returning bombers. One man - journalist Ritchie Calder - tries to warn the authorities that the school is a tragedy waiting to happen, and when the bombers do return they score a direct hit, killing hundreds.
Judy was moved to tears when she discovers that her family story is outlined in terse civil defence dispatches held in the local archives. An entire branch of her family tree is lost, a tragedy that ironically stemmed from a bomb that didn’t go off.
Calder was determined to publicise the human cost of this bomb and those that did go off. His two grandsons explain his mission to explore the real problem London faced in the first weeks of the blitz; the thousands of people who had lost absolutely everything including their homes. For the first time it’s necessary to create city-wide welfare systems that work for everyone. This film explores the work of one exceptional MP who put these systems in place in record time, and joins the call for a National Health Service. - Genre
- History; Technology; Social Science; Psychology
How to cite this record
The Open University, "Blitz: The Bombs That Changed Britain". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/228979 (Accessed 24 Nov 2025)