No perky cockneys? How Henry Moore’s sheltering souls puncture our blitz bravado

On the eve of a general election, the artist’s drawings of Londoners sheltering from Nazi bombs in the Underground come as a sobering yet welcome reminder of British decency

When the blitz began in September 1940, Londoners sought the safety of deep Underground stations and tunnels – and Henry Moore, the most famous British modern artist of the age, went down there to sketch them. His eerie drawings of people neatly lying in rows or sitting haggard in vortex-like ashen tunnels are startling and disorienting because they don’t bear any resemblance to our myths about the second world war.

Where are the perky cockneys defying the Nazi bombs? These people burrowing into the earth to survive look desperate rather than indomitable. The works don’t even look very British: instead of dwelling on quirky details of Underground posters or clothing that would localise them, Moore abstracts his sheltering souls. The drawings seem to embody suffering across all of 1940s Europe.