ABSTRACT
The experience of childhood in Second World War Britain cannot be reduced to five things, or to any discrete set of objects, events, or experiences. Of the hundreds of memory narratives of wartime childhood gathered in the BBC People’s War archive, none has affected as powerfully as Ronald Nichol’s account of the bombing of Rush Green Emergency Hospital in Romford, Essex in June 1944. Several famous photographs have come to illustrate the popular history and heritage of Second World War Britain. St Paul’s Cathedral shines white in black smoke; Coventry Cathedral lies in ruins; a cheerful milkman walks through the debris of an air raid and three-year-old Eileen Dunne sits in her hospital bed, her head wrapped in bandages, clutching a soft toy and staring directly into the camera. The image that Haldane conjured and those that Cecil Beaton and other photographers captured appeal to our supposed humanistic instincts to protect children from harm.
