“It is at night-time that we notice most of the changes in our life caused by the war”

This chapter examines the Zeppelin experience of Great War London as reflected in diaries written by Londoners during the war, and in the essays by young Jack Marriage and his school friends. The Zeppelin was both an imagined threat and an actual one. The Zeppelin experience changed the way London residents perceived the urban sphere from the early days of the war, when the aerial raids were merely an imagined threat, and through the actual attacks by which the Zeppelins brought the war to the city, in the most physical way. The urban sphere of London was changed when Britain prepared to be raided, and also when the raids began and brought the sights of the front to the home front. The chapter discusses the actual raids, and argues that the Zeppelins blurred the boundaries between the distinct worlds of children and of adults in Great War London.