Book dossier

London's burning

by Peter Stansky

During the First World War, the most important British works of art inspired by war were the poems and paintings of young artists whose lives were at risk in battle. During the Second World War, when the Blitz made civilians in London and elsewhere almost as vulnerable as those at the front, it could be argued that the greatest artistic achievements were by civilian artists. This book examines, from a historical and cultural perspective, the rich outpouring of art in Great Britain during the war years. It does this through a close study of the lives and wartime work of the sculptor Henry Moore, the documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings, and the composer Benjamin Britten. It was difficult for Henry Moore, already an established sculptor, to continue his work under wartime conditions. Supported by the War Artists Advisory Committee, he was commissioned to do a series of drawings of people in bomb shelters, most often the underground stations of London. These masterly works, at once eternal and of the moment, vividly evoked the determination of the British people to endure, and to preserve their humane values. Toward the end of the war, building on these drawings and in his first return to sculpture, Moore created what the authors consider his masterpiece, the Madonna and Child in St. Matthew's Church, Northampton. . Many other artists were supported by the War Artists Advisory Committee, and the authors briefly examine the work of Paul Nash, who created what may be the single greatest British painting of the war, Totes Meer (Dead Sea), and Graham Sutherland, with his grim bombscapes - stark and semi-abstract depictions of the dreadful damage suffered by the City of London. Fires Were Started, a recreated documentary film of the Blitz directed by Humphrey Jennings, related with quiet humanity the story of 24 hours in the life of a fire-fighting group. Without naming the enemy, it provided a rich sense of the values Britain was fighting for, and demonstrated how ordinary people performed extraordinary deeds as a matter of course. Finally, the authors analyze a less obvious war work, Benjamin Britten's first great opera, Peter Grimes. It was composed during the war years and had its London premiere in June 1945, after victory in Europe but before the conclusion of the war in the East. Written by an outsider - a conscientious objector, a homosexual, someone who had spent the first years of the war in the United States - it asserted the right of the individual, however misguided, to stand up against the community even at the cost of his life. Two central themes unite the individual studies: first, the way in which massive suffering and destruction, in the context of British wartime culture, could become the raw material and inspiration for art; and second, the broader politics of culture, including the role of the state in providing direct support for individual artistic expression in wartime - partly for reasons of propaganda and public morale, and partly as a cultural response to the menace of fascism.