Air raid: People asleep on the platform of Holborn

1940

Lying side by side on rolled-up newspapers and blankets, Londoners of all ages find scant comfort on the cold tiles of Holborn station’s Piccadilly line platform. A battered inner tube tyre and a battered coat serve as pillows, while behind them the familiar roundel and wartime posters—promoting Arctic kit for servicemen and evening classes to “take better away with you”—stand as silent witnesses to their plight.

During the height of the Blitz in late 1940, Underground stations like Holborn became improvised bomb shelters for thousands seeking refuge from the Luftwaffe’s nightly raids. With surface air‑raid shelters overwhelmed, the Tube offered relative safety beneath London’s streets, transforming places of daily commute into makeshift dormitories lasting until dawn.

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