The Exeter Blitz by David Rees

First published: 1978

Type of work: Historical fiction

Themes: War, family, and coming-of-age

Time of work: May, 1942

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: Exeter, Devon, England

Principal Characters:

• Colin Lockwood, a boy of fourteen, bored with school
• Mr. Kitchen, a substitute history teacher in Colin’s school
• Terry Wootton, an evacuee from London
• June Lockwood, Colin’s younger sister, ten, sympathetic but preoccupied with her best friend
• Brenda Lockwood, Colin’s mother, assistant manager of Nimrod’s dress shop
• Mary Lockwood, Colin’s elder sister, eighteen, training to be a nurse
• Lars, Mary’s boyfriend, half Swedish, who aspires to be a ballet dancer but has received his draft notice
• Ron Lockwood, Colin’s father, head verger of Exeter Cathedral
• Lorna Wimbleball, fashion expert from Nimrod’s head office

The Story

The main event of The Exeter Blitz is outlined in a factual introduction: On the night of May 3-4, 1942, German planes attacked Exeter in one of the “Baedecker Raids” on places of historic and architectural, rather than military, importance. More than one hundred people were killed and nearly five hundred injured; explosions and fires seriously damaged thousands of buildings while the cathedral sustained relatively light damage. Through Colin Lockwood and his family, David Rees makes the reader experience these facts and figures in an intensely personal way.

The suspense in the novel lies not in what happens next but in how the characters will be affected. Colin is introduced as a typical fourteen-year-old, disgruntled with school because the substitute history teacher demands what Colin sees as silly projects, instead of covering the syllabus, and because he has to sit next to Terry Wootton, a tough Cockney. He is critical of his elder and younger sisters because they are involved in their own interests. While he does not always obey his parents, he respects and loves them.

When the attack begins, the family members are scattered in different parts of the city. Rees increases the impact by describing the destruction through the perspective of each group, in turn. At home, Mr. Lockwood and June take shelter under the stairs before half the house falls in; Mary and Lars, who have gone to a film, are shot at by the planes’ rear-gunners but arrive safely in a public shelter; Mrs. Lockwood, supervising a fashion show at Nimrod’s, is trapped in the store’s elevator with Mrs. Wimbleball and Mr. and Mrs. Kitchen; and Colin, who had left the fashion show in a fit of laughter at Mrs. Wimbleball’s ridiculous manner, is on the tower of the cathedral retrieving his jacket. In the midst of his or her own danger, each family member worries about what might be happening to the others.

The results are narrated in a similarly fragmented way, with an emphasis on bringing the fragments together. Mary, working at the hospital, learns that her mother is injured but will survive; Mr. and Mrs. Kitchen, however, have been killed, and Mrs. Wimbleball will probably be paralyzed. June and her father dig themselves out of the wreckage, and Colin finally runs to a shelter near the cathedral and encounters Terry. Once they all know that none of the family has been seriously hurt, they feel fortunate even though their house and most of their belongings are gone.

In the last third of the book, rebuilding begins and life goes on. Each member of the family has lost something, especially Mary, who has to cope with Lars’s departure for the army as well as the loss of familiar possessions. It is clear, however, that each has also gained in strength and resourcefulness. For Colin, there seems to be much more gain than loss: He is more confident in his own abilities, he has Terry’s friendship, and the two of them are entering a new phase by dating girls. Besides, whatever happens, the cathedral stands as a symbol of the traditions and unconquerable spirit of Exeter, a place, as Colin says, “worth talking about.”

Context

The Exeter Blitz is David Rees’s best-known novel for children, having won the Carnegie Medal in 1978. He has written other books about the Exeter area, using a variety of approaches. The Spectrum (1977), for instance, combines history and fantasy as eighteen-year-old Alan and Kate travel in time to experience the lives of their seventeenth century ancestors in a Devon village. While customs, fashions, and appearances change, love remains constant. Rees addresses younger readers and an earlier period in A Beacon for the Romans (1981), an illustrated book set in fifth century Exeter at the time when the Roman invaders are leaving after a 340-year occupation. Like Colin and Terry, Marcus and Kieran, in this book, become friends despite their prejudices about each other.

The Exeter setting makes The Exeter Blitz stand out among the many fictional treatments of World War II that have appeared in Britain since 1965. Central to most of these books is the experience of Londoners, whether those who remain in London, as in Jill Paton Walsh’s Fireweed (1969), or those who have been evacuated, as in Nina Bawden’s Carrie’s War (1973). One exception, Robert Westall’s The Machine-Gunners (1975), set in the North of England, and also a Carnegie Medal winner, contrasts sharply with The Exeter Blitz because of its delight in violence, as Rees himself suggests in Painted Desert, Green Shade (1984), a collection of essays on writers of fiction for young people. By focusing so narrowly on one event in World War II, Rees might have produced merely a fictionalized account of historical fact; instead, his characterization and narrative combine to remind the reader that the values of family and community can survive even the terrors of war.