Arthur Johnson at work in the newspaper office.
During the second world war, my grandfather Arthur Johnson was ‘Blitz Reporter’ for the local paper in Liverpool. While published reports were censored, or at least very carefully worded, he kept a secret – illegal – diary recording in detail the devastation to the city. You can read more about it here.
Arthur and his diary are featuring heavily in a three-part Channel 5 TV series, The Blitz: Britain On Fire, which is showing at 9pm on Monday 27 May and the following two nights.
Arthur’s son – also Arthur Johnson – was on BBC Radio Merseyside’s Linda McDermott show on 15 May discussing his father, the diary, and the awful week of the Liverpool Blitz in May 1941. It is available on catch-up for a few days here.
I am continuing to publish the letters that Arthur and my grandmother Stella wrote to each other after he was called up to the Navy in 1942 – posting them on this website exactly 75 years after they were written. If you have just found this website, at the time of writing (i.e. May 1944) Arthur was working as a signalman at the Admiralty in a Whitehall basement and lodging with his sister Dot and her husband Jack. He has just been told that he is to leave Whitehall, but doesn’t yet know where he will be drafted… Today’s letter is here.