Next month, a new BBC2 drama The Night Watch, based on Sarah Waters’ bestselling book, is set to bring the Blitz to life. Stylist explores the years that saw the birth of the modern woman...

There’s something incredibly stoic; almost romantic about the time known as ‘the Blitz’ – the unrelenting eight-month period in which British cities were systematically bombed by Hitler’s air force during World War II. Taking place over 76 consecutive nights, beginning on 7 September 1940 with a 10-hour raid on London which saw 436 people killed (the total number of civilian deaths would be 43,000 by the time the Blitz ended on 16 May 1941), the onslaught is often cited as the most testing time of the 1939-1945 conflict and – thanks to the resilience of the British people – spawned the immortal phrase ‘Blitz spirit’.

It’s not just an era that shaped national character; it was an instrumental time in the evolution of British women. Personified in films as feisty females with rolled hair and red lipstick, wearing seams drawn in pencil down the back of bare legs and engaging in immoral affairs with American GIs, or femme fatale spies helping Le Resistance, the Forties woman entirely embodied this ‘Blitz spirit’. Immortalised in war posters emblazoned with the words, “We Can Do It!” and “Your Country Needs You”, women raised families single-handedly, ran factories, drove ambulances, and built vehicles, trucks and ammunition while their men were at war.

Following on from Joe Wright’s Atonement (2007) and the BBC One series Land Girls (2009), next month women of the Blitz era are to be brought vividly to life again, as Sarah Waters’ bestselling novel The Night Watch is given the BBC treatment. Set in Blitz-ravaged London during and after WWII, the story traces the destinies of three women: Kay (Anna Maxwell Martin), Helen (Claire Foy) and Viv (Jodie Whittaker) whose lives were transformed by the unfolding Blitz. Most memorable is Kay, who found liberation and acceptance by wearing a man’s uniform during the war, only to struggle when the conflict ended and she was once again expected to be a conventional female. It’s Waters’ darkest and most melancholy novel by far, a subtle exploration of what makes girls into the women they become.

A WOMAN’S PLACE

Socially, the first major revolution for Blitz women was in the workplace as previously, in the Thirties, women were expected to stay at home (despite having won voting rights in 1928, patronising attitudes towards women prevailed and married women were not expected to have jobs). The breakout of war changed all that, when male conscription in October 1939 caused a nationwide labour shortage virtually overnight.

For the first time – as well as volunteering in civil defence, as part of ARP (Air Raid Precautions) and the WVS (Women’s Voluntary Service) – it became clear that women were also desperately needed in industry for assembling weapons and building ships and aircraft, as well as driving army trucks or providing logistical support in the civil service.

By late 1941, women aged 18 to 60 were conscripted into the war effort, choosing between working in the services, nursing, factories, transport or the Land Army. Women’s status was undergoing rapid and profound change. Historian Carol Harris, author of Blitz Diary: Life Under Fire In World War II, says: “There has been little official acknowledgement of the enormous and crucial contribution those British women made to the lives we live now. Women ran fire stations and drove ambulances while cities burned and bombs exploded around them. They kept their families going, as single parents while husbands were in the Forces.”

In factories women not only acquired technical prowess, but also found camaraderie among women from very different backgrounds. A former maid might work alongside a debutante, both of them clad in boiler suits and bonding over a shared cigarette. Mothers were offered flexible working hours, free nurseries and time off in the mornings to shop for food. It all sounds remarkably modern.

The war that liberated women