A “heartbreaking reality”: Coping with Home-Loss in Urban Britain during the Second World War
During the Second World War, millions of urban Britons were dislocated from their homes. This experience was a varied one: home-loss could be a direct result of the Luftwaffe’s assault on British towns and cities, or it could instead be meted out by the state itself, through the policy of requisition. Some lost their homes permanently; others were estranged from this space for months or years but were eventually able to return. However, whilst particular understandings of home-loss were necessarily shaped by both cause and duration, the fundamental experience was invariably a disruptive one, attended by an array of political, financial, emotional, and practical consequences. This paper will track the aftermath of wartime home-loss, both as a result of enemy action and requisitioning, and seek to deconstruct the factors which shaped citizens’ experiences of losing this space. In turn, the paper will also explore the way in which the loss of home itself came to impact upon wider discourses about the relationship between citizen and state in wartime. By doing so, it aims to establish the home – especially at the moment of its loss – as a key lens for examining urban Britons’ wider understanding of the conflict, and their own place within it.
Jacinta Mallon is a PhD student in the Centre for the History of War, Media and Society and the University of Kent and a doctoral fellow of the IHR.
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This page was last updated on 14 March 2025
