It’s 75 years ago since Britain faced one of the greatest dangers in its history – the Blitz.

Now to mark the anniversary, IWM North, part of Imperial War Museums, in Manchester has teamed up with Horrible Histories to reveal some of the terrible truths behind this catastrophic conflict with a new exhibition that start this Saturday, July 11.

The Blitz meant children were sent to the other side of the country from where they lived.

The museum has a fascinating letter from Honley grocer A W Wimpenny which he wrote on March 23, 1941, to the parents of Joan Walsh, an evacuee schoolgirl from Brighton who had been billeted with his family.

It reads:

Dear Sir,

I expect that you and your wife are very much worried as to where Joan has been sent to, and what kind of people she is with.

We are, as you are, a family of three my wife, myself and daughter Kathleen who will be 15 in four months time, Honley is a village about four miles from Huddersfield connected by bus and tram services and it is the village in which the school is situated where Joan will be attending. We live in the other end of the village from the school which is about a mile away and on most days the children walk but when wet they can get about three quarters of the way by bus. The school is a modern one having been built about eight years ago, and is on the hillside and very pleasantly situated right in the fields.

My wife and I are still on the best side of 50 and I am the grocer and local manager of the local Cooperative Society which, of course, is very small compared with the size of Brighton Cooperative Society. It is naturally a little difficult to explain our home but we have dining and drawing rooms and scullery, three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs and cellaring underneath. The rooms are what we call medium size larger than most moderns one but, of course, not so large as some which need domestic help.

The three of us are determined to try very hard to make Joan comfortable and happy, always remembering what an ordeal she is going through at so tender an age and at the loss of her mum and dad.

Joan arrived at our home just about five tonight and at Kathleen’s friends are two who Joan knows. I think they are called Joan and Audrey Werry. I don’t know if have the last name correct, they are staying about 25 yards away. If you can tell us any of the little weaknesses that Joan has, it will make it easier for us to help Joan to settle. What I mean is has she any special like or dislike for food, does she enjoy her own made pleasure or does she like other children playing with her, any particular little weakness when going to bed and when getting up in the morning. We just want to do the things which she has been used to.

With your permission we shall allow her to go to church (Church of England) with Kathleen on Sunday mornings for 9.30am and to Sunday School in the afternoon for 2pm.

We hope that you will be satisfied that we shall try and make Joan very happy and comfortable and we shall be soon able to enjoy that complete victory which will make the glorious reunion most happy.

I am yours very sincerely,

A Wimpenny

In the exhibition see the flag from the plane of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who flew to meet German leader Adolf Hitler in Munich in 1938 and thought he had secured ‘peace for our time’. Then discover how wrong he was.

This is a major new interactive exhibition for families and includes the cigarette lighter that saved the life of an air raid warden, a torch found by medics in the Houses of Parliament on the night they were bombed, a previously unseen target map showing locations the Nazis wanted to destroy and remarkable true stories of the real Dad’s Army.

Government World War Two poster about the Blitz

Personal stories and more than 200 objects, photographs, art works, film clips and sound recordings from IWM’s unrivalled national collections reveal how, for the first time, the Blitz brought the war to the doorsteps of everyone in Britain.

Immerse yourself in the horrible home front as you stumble through a blackout, climb under the kitchen table Morrison shelter and step outside the 1940s house to milk a cow like an evacuee. Pick up a survival guide and begin your journey through the Blitz. Cover your ears and hold your nose as you peak into a 1940s toilet and sniff your way through stinky smells, from pig bins to ration stew. Then create your own rotten recipes from wartime ingredients.

Discover what job you would have been given in wartime Britain. Take our test to discover how squeamish you are, then take the plunge as you step into the uniforms – from the ARP Warden to the Women’s Land Army.

Be inspired by stories such as Charity Bick – the bicycle dispatch rider braving the bombs to deliver messages – and jump on a bike to deliver a message as fast as you can. Can you reach your destination faster than the pigeon? Explore some of the most unusual objects in IWM’s collections. Would your dog enjoy spending the night in a gas proof metal kennel?

Hear the first-hand accounts of evacuated children separated from their parents for the first time and discover the stories of ordinary people who stayed in the cities under the constant threat as you discover the resilience and inventiveness of the Blitz spirit.

To find out more at iwm.org.uk or connect with @IWMNorth #BlitzedBrits on Twitter or Facebook.com/iwm.north