| ‘A compelling picture of a vanished world’
The Veteran
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In 1936 anthropologist Tom Harrison, poet and journalist Charles Madge, and documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings set up the Mass Observation Project. The idea was simple: ordinary people would record, in diary form, the events of their everyday lives. An estimated one million pages eventually found their way to the archive - and it soon became clear this was more than anyone could digest. Today, the diaries are stored at the University of Sussex, where remarkably most remain unread. In Our Hidden Lives, Simon Garfield has skilfully woven a tapestry of diary entries in the rarely discussed but pivotal period of 1945 to 1948. The result is a moving, intriguing, funny, at times heartbreaking book - unashamedly populist in the spirit of Forgotten Voices or indeed Margaret Forster's Diary of an Ordinary Woman.
'I love these diaries. They have the attraction of being stories, but REAL stories - Better than any novel.' Margaret Forster
'A lovely book. It will appeal to anyone who appreciates the richness and diversity of human experience.' Tony Benn
'Utterly engrossing, better than any kind of reality TV.' Gavin Esler
'Funny, vivid, touching, angry, thoughtful - every page is a delight. This is definitely no. 1 on my present list to give to everyone in the coming year.' Jenny Uglow, author of The Lunar Men
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| ‘A quiet but vivid account of an under-reported era of British life’
Family History Monthly
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| ‘An engrossing account of post-war austerity’
Anthony Howard Sunday Telegraph
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| ‘Cleverly plaited together, the reports reveal not only the national detail but also the differing personalities and domestic preoccupations of the writers…Nothing less than a sharp snapshot of Britain's history'
Good Book Guide
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| ‘Garfield has chosen the lives he highlights well’
History Today
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| ‘The extracts chosen work like the pieces of a mosaic to build a fascinating picture of everyday people and their lives in a time rarely written about.’
Daily Mail
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| ‘Their world created, deliberately and not, the one we still live in.’
Guardian
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| ‘These ‘everyday diaries’ scotch the myth that history is only made by the famous or powerful…Nobody can fail to be moved by the lives revealed here and the spirit of the diarists.’
Diplomat Magazine
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| ‘They evoke the poverty and harshness but also the hope and stoicism of those years immediately after the Second World War’
Tribune
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| ‘We, the readers, become engrossed in their stories and lives’
Publishing News
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| '*****'....'Diaries that will rewrite our history...simple but brilliant...endlessly fascinating...The five diarists are very different from one another; it is the variety of their views and experiences that makes this compilation so compelling....Our Hidden Lives intertwines modest private lives with historic public events and is by turns poignant, shocking, informative and very funny'
Mail on Sunday
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| 'a fascinating treasure-trove of daily-life details which make the rigours and triumphs of this overlooked time come alive'
Quicksilver
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| 'dip in or read cover to cover; five voices reflecting on great events, or single stories...skilfully edited and intercut...riveting and often moving book...it is unrationed delight'
Express
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| 'Even in the most depressed post-war years, the mass-Observation diaries of nobodies are profound with the mysteries of the everyday....This surreal crew are painfully real in their revealed ambiguities...time has transformed their trivial entries into the sublime; their important days will always resonate'
The Guardian
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| 'funny, moving, fascinating and utterly irresistible'
British Life
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| 'It's riveting stuff'
TES
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| 'nothing less than a sharp snapshot of Britain's history'
Good Book Guide
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| 'Our Hidden Lives is a marvellous collection of diaries, written by five plain, ordinary - but exceptionally fascinating - individuals for Mass Observation...These lively, frank records are nostalgic for those who lived through the times, but will be an eye opener for today's affluent and liberated generation of what life was like in that austere and straight-laced period.'
Evening Standard
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| 'richly textured diaries...what really makes the book is the fresh light it sheds on the immediate post-war years...it is history from the other end of the telescope - what life was like on the ground'
Financial Times
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| 'Stitched together by Garfield's masterful editing, the entries create a beguiling snapshot of a period that has often been overshadowed'
The Independent
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| 'The diary extracts achieve the narrative force of novel... a window on the British temperament during a little-examined period of recent history… Most engaging’
Literary Review
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| 'the year's most readable book, a rich trove of entertainment and instruction'
Sunday Times
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| A fascinating and moving portrait of ordinary lives in extraordinary times....each telling detail propelled me towards the next. I could not put this book down. Over the course of its 500 or so pages, its characters almost became friends. Once I'd finished the book I missed them
Melanie McGrath Evening Standard
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| A quite magical store of voices from another age
Observer
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| I haven't read a more engrossing book in years…a triumph of sympathetic editing
Sunday Times
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| Poignant, compellingly edited...what really grips are the characters themselves, whose daily entries have a poignancy usually found in only the most engaging of novels
Sunday Times
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| There can be no better book than Our Hidden Lives... Those readers of other people's diaries will revel in this delicious book
The Observer
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| These are invaluable records of quiet lives, sometimes despairing, often moving, occasionally bitter, frequently prescient. Occasionally they are just plain funny
Sunday Telegraph
More
Information
Ebury Press • British & Irish history: postwar, from c 1945 - • Previous
ISBN: 0091897335
Publication date: 07/04/2005 • 544 pages • B (Ebury) • EAN: 9780091897338 |
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