A little more than a decade ago Neil MacGregor launched a trend in publishing with his book A History of the World in 100 Objects. By using a selection of items from the collection held by the British Museum (of which he was the director) he showed how material objects could unlock the past and help us understand the people who created them. The popularity of his approach quickly triggered a veritable avalanche of works that sought to tell the history of everything from the Catholic Church to cricket through the artifacts they produced.

In this respect Ian Castle’s book is a relatively late addition to the genre. It’s not even the first such work that seeks to tell the story of the First World War through its artifacts, having been preceded by works by Gary Sheffield and Peter Doyle featuring objects from throughout the conflict. What sets Castle’s book apart from them is his focus on just one part of the war, specifically the German bombing campaign against Britain. Starting with items as humble as a pair of airship girders (one of duralumin, the other of plywood) he details how the items selected reveal the history of the battle to terrorize Britain from the air.

While Castle presents the objects chronologically, the items featured can be grouped into one of four categories. The first and most obvious of these are the artifacts of the air war itself. These range from surviving bombs and items worn by pilots and crewmembers to anti-aircraft guns and airplanes. Related to this are the artifacts of the damage caused by the campaign, which includes sites which today still bear the signs of bombing. While occasionally this damage was memorialized, gravesites and other markers recounting the history of the campaign were erected, and comprise a third category. The final one consists of the cultural items created by the campaign, such as medals and souvenirs produced by both sides that also serve to convey their interpretations of the campaign.

Through these, Castle constructs a fascinating collage of the campaign. What stands out most is the sheer novelty of aerial warfare, and how both sides adapted to it. This adaptation was as much cultural as it was military, and reflected the public’s adjustment to an unprecedented danger. With the civilian population in Britain under direct threat from a foreign power for the first time in nearly 250 years the zeppelins soon proved more of a novelty than anything else. Attacked towns often experienced a flood of tourists, as curious Britons flocked to gape at the damage done by the attacks. Among the most fascinating items Castle highlights is the commemorative china offering miniature replicas of the zeppelins and their bombs stamped with the crests of the communities attacked. Trivializing the bombings through commercialization probably wasn’t the reaction the Germans were anticipating.

These were far from the only artifacts created by the campaign, however. Destroyed zeppelins often were stripped by locals and refashioned into mementoes of the event. Memorials to the attacks also were established, noting the impact points of bombs and the lives lost to them. And the efforts to defeat the German campaign led to the reshaping of the landscape, from specially-built gun positions to “sound mirrors” designed to improve detection times of approaching aircraft, some of which survive down to the present day. Castle describes each of these objects and the roles they played, yet in doing so his focus never strays from the people who created, used, or were affected by them. The stories told in the book are as much their own as they are of the campaign more generally, showing how their lives were shaped by the war happening around them.

By focusing on the artifacts it produced, Castle features elements into the story of the bombing campaign that are often left out from most histories of it. He is aided considerably in this regard by a generous use of photographs of both the objects themselves and the lives of the people intertwined with them. Together it makes for a visually appealing book that serves as a fine history of the “First Blitz” and an interesting look at the physical legacy of it that survives to this day. ( )