Zeppelin Nights: London in the First World War

A unique look at London during the turbulent years of the First World War, seen through the eyes of the people who lived there.
     Keep the home fires burning….
11 p.m., Tuesday August 4, 1914: For the next four years the people of London would find themselves at the hub of the ever-enlarging storm of World War One. 
   The many tangled threads of Britain’s war converged on the capital: the majority of munitions were manufactured there; soldiers in their hundreds of thousands passed through, on their way to active service or brought back bleeding from the frontlines; refugees from war-torn territories sought respite and a new life there. And then there were the citizens themselves -- patriots and pacifists, clergymen and thieves, bluestockings and prostitutes -- all dependent on the shifting fortunes of war.
   Jerry White shows us a city struggling, but also flourishing, economically and socially, leading us through factories and nightclubs alike. As war raged on many fronts across the globe, Londoners almost without exception were caught up body and soul in its thrall.

Professor JERRY WHITE teaches London history at Birkbeck, University of London. His acclaimed trilogy on London, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, is an unparalleled narrative of the capital, and London in the Twentieth Century: A City And Its People won the Wolfson History Prize in 2001. The most recent in the trilogy was London in the Eighteenth Century: A Great And Monstrous Thing, which was published in 2012. Jerry White was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by the University of London in 2005 and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.