S2 E1: Murders in a City Without Light

London's West End - once a glittering Mecca of nightlife - is pitch black. The lights are off to hide the city from waves of Nazi bombers - but in the darkness a merciless killer is hunting down the women of this district.

Join hosts Hallie Rubenhold and Alice Fiennes as they walk those bomb-damaged streets to tell the stories of the women targeted by this "Blackout Ripper" over the course of just one week in 1942.

You'll glimpse inside the theaters, jazz joints and dive bars of Piccadilly and Soho; witness deadly air raids; and criss cross the blacked out streets where a serial killer lurks. You'll learn too of the hardships that blighted the lives of many women in wartime, and the extent of the violence they faced at the hands of men from their own side in the conflict.

Sources:

Bone, James. London Echoing (London: Jonathan Cape, 1948)

Caddick-Adams, Peter. Sand and Steel: A New History of D-Day (London: Penguin Random House, 2019).

Cederwell, William. Reading London in Wartime: Blitz, the People and Propaganda in 1940s Literature (New York: Routledge, 2018).

Farson, N. Bomber’s Moon (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1941).

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