This article explores how identity becomes fractured during the Second World War through an in-depth analysis of Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day (1948). The article argues that the novel is both a spy novel and an Irish Big House novel; the elements of the Big House novel bring into relief the split identity that occurs to members of the Ascendancy, who have loyalties to both Ireland and England. During the Blitz attacks that occurred in London, Londoners become double agents as they tried to navigate a familiar world that became unfamiliar because of the destruction that surrounded them. This double agency occurs on the level of the individual but transcends that to the national, as England must navigate its relationship with a formerly colonized but now neutral Ireland. Thus, the personal and political becomes interwoven in inextricable ways, and Bowen’s novel suggests this is how identity must work for an individual to survive.