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Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen's latest film Blitz, starring Saoirse Ronan, portrays what it was like for the ordinary people who had to endure the horror of the devastating German bombing campaign of World War Two. But does the cinematic portrayal show what life was really like under the aerial bombardment? We look back at how the ����ý reported on it at the time.

As World War Two entered its second year, Britons began to experience a new and terrifying kind of warfare.

On 7 September 1940, German bomber planes began appearing over London. For the next nine hours nearly 100 Luftwaffe planes rained down more than 300 tons of bombs on the city.

In the aftermath, the next morning's ����ý radio bulletin reported how "high explosive bombs of all sizes, and many incendiary bombs were dropped and scattered over large areas of the city” during "London's biggest and heaviest air raid".

The attack signalled the start of a relentless bombing campaign by Nazi Germany.

London was subsequently bombed for 57 nights in a row. During this aerial onslaught more than 20,000 bombs were dropped, killing thousands of civilians and destroying large parts of the city.

London, however, was far from alone. For eight months from September 1940 to May 1941, cities and towns across the UK - especially the big ports and industrial centres - endured an almost continual bombardment resulting in unprecedented level of destruction.

It was dubbed by the British press as the 'Blitz' - derived from the German word Blitzkrieg meaning "lightning war". The aim of the campaign was to disrupt the production of vital supplies needed for the war effort and demoralise the British public, who it was hoped would force the government to surrender.

When the German bombers returned on 8 September 1940, Raymond Glendenning took to the roof of the ����ý's Broadcasting House to report on carnage he saw.

As he looked out over London, he described scenes of gun flashes and searchlights lighting up the night sky as fires raged across the city. The government had agreed that the ����ý should be allowed to report news events truthfully and accurately, but not in such detail as to endanger the civilian population or military jeopardise operations.

The German bombs did not just target industrial and military buildings, they also hit residential areas and people’s homes.

As well as explosives, the Luftwaffe would drop incendiary bombs. These were intended to start fires which rapidly spread from building to building to light up targets on the ground. These incendiary bombs were used to particularly devastating effect in a raid on Coventry on 14 November 1940, where they set much of the city alight, destroying more than 4,000 homes and its medieval cathedral.

The Blitz caused huge loss of life and widespread destruction. German bombs killed some 43,000 people across the UK during the raids. London alone saw tens of thousands of homes destroyed, rendering families homeless. People were also left reeling from the psychological toll of being under attack.

Alec, a young Londoner, described to the ����ý the moment bombs dropped on his borough of Croydon. He described hearing the characteristic whistling sound that many of the German bombs made as they fell and being blown over by the blast as they hit.

From the start of the war the government had begun large-scale evacuations to try and ensure the safety of as much of the population as possible.

In the first four days of September 1939 nearly three million people, the vast majority of whom were schoolchildren, were evacuated from Britain's towns and cities and moved to the countryside where it was believed they would be safer.

As the evacuations began, the ����ý's SJ de Lotbinière went down to report from the platform of London's Waterloo station as hundreds of inner-city children were packed on to trains heading for the country.

To protect those that remained in the cities, air raid sirens warned of incoming attacks and ‘blackout’ was enforced after dusk. Homes and businesses were required to cover their windows with cloth, paint or cardboard to prevent any light escaping and that would give clues to enemy bombers.

About a month after the Blitz began, ����ý reporter Laurence Gilliam recorded how people were coping in such a stressful situation.

In London Under Fire, broadcast on 6 October 1940, he spoke to people sheltering in the crypt at St Martin-in-the-Fields church on Trafalgar Square.

A bus driver taking shelter while on shift told him how he relied on the conductor as "in the cab of the bus, you can't hear the warnings".

Across the Thames on a Kennington housing estate, the occupants of a surface shelter performed a song they had written to keep up morale: "We wouldn't change our little wooden bunk for you."

The government also encouraged people to build Anderson air raid shelters in their gardens or install Morrison ones within their homes, if they were able.

But for many people in London, underground stations became temporary shelters where they could huddle together for safety from the attacks above ground. At the peak of the Blitz, 177,000 Londoners slept in the tube system for safety.

On 1 November 1940, ����ý's Michael Standing went down to Piccadilly Underground to interview some of people sheltering there.

Although there were sporadic bombing raids on Britain throughout the war, the sustained campaign of the Blitz ended in May 1941. This was largely due to Hitler redirecting the .

In subsequent years, Germany was attacked using a similar bombing tactic. In 1942, the Allies switched to a policy of ‘area bombing’, which targeted large industrial cities and did not distinguish between military and civilian targets.

As many as 600,000 German citizens were killed as a result of Allied bombing. During the bombing of Hamburg in 1943, the death toll from fire and suffocation has been estimated at 46,000 including 5,000 children, and nearly a million people were made homeless.