Aspects of the London Blitz are represented in the novels The End of the Affair (Graham Greene 1951) and Spies (Michael Frayn 2002), and these representations involve a reflection on the effects on urban culture and city lives of the translation of the destructive action of war to the metropolitan sphere. To the purpose of elucidating the extent of this reflection, this article offers a comparative analysis of the depiction of human lives in an urban environment under threat of instantaneous ruin in both novels. The analysis is guided by the specificities of urban ruin originated by bombing as useful indicators to relevant textual items, and focuses on the divine associations of air bombing, the articulation between built and open or “natural” spaces in the urban framework, social difference encoded in the city landscape, the significance of bomb sites and urban routine affected by the war. The conclusions attempt to show how, conversely, the literary representation of bombing attacks on the city illuminates the actual experience or city life and urban culture.
