Man's 15-year quest to uncover city's Blitz story

A man has dedicated 15 years of his life to uncover what happened to his grandmother and other families during the Sheffield Blitz in 1940.

Neil Anderson decided to take on the project after the chance discovery of an unpublished memoir following Dorothy Glover's death at the age of 93 in 2009.

Mr Anderson, who runs a PR consultancy in the city, said his upcoming four-book set titled "Sheffield Blitz - The Definitive Collection" would reveal the untold war secrets families believed had gone to the grave.

Mr Anderson said: "This isn't just history, it's a time machine into your family's hidden past and a record to ensure their stories are never forgotten."

Dorothy Glover was in her 20s when bombs rained on the city on 12 and 15 December 1940, killing hundreds of people and leaving thousands homeless.

Mrs Glover spoke very little of the war during her lifetime but left behind her memories in the form of a book, discovered after her death just before the 70th anniversary of the Blitz.

To Mr Anderson's surprise, she did not write about the horrors of the war but much simpler aspects of life.

"It talks about the nights spent in a communal air raid shelter in the Fir Vale area," Mr Anderson, who is the chair of the Sheffield Blitz Memorial Trust, said.

"It was all the petty squabbles that used to kick off between the neighbours night after night."

The discovery of her memoir sparked Mr Anderson's desire to find out more about what he described as a "big part of Sheffield's story".

"This was something that totally reshaped [the city] but there was so little to mark it," he said.

"That really put me on a journey, I thought I'd love to do more to mark what actually happened."

His research included interviews with hundreds of survivors, weeks spent in archives in both the UK and Germany, and collaboration with the Imperial War Museum.

Mr Anderson said part of his collection focused on why Sheffield had one of the lowest evacuation rates in the country and why bombs were still falling four years after the Blitz.

"I started this journey with one question: What really happened to my family during the Sheffield Blitz?", said Mr Anderson.

"Like so many people, my grandparents lived through the bombings but never spoke about them.

"I had to find the answers for myself - and for everyone else still wondering."

To officially launch the collection, Mr Anderson will host a free event on 11 June at Sheffield Central Library.

Among the collection's discoveries is a set of original German bombing maps, smuggled out of Germany after the war, hundreds of rare photographs as well as a full lists of every civilian casualty in World War Two.

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