|
 About
the book…
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
About the author…
Simon Garfield is an award-winning feature writer on the Observer
and author of two previous books of oral history, both highly acclaimed.
His study of Aids in Britain, The End of Innocence, was awarded
the Somerset Maugham Prize, and the bestselling Mauve was described
by the Daily Telegraph as 'a book about science which also happens
to be a miniature work of art'. His most recent work, The Last Journey
of William Huskisson, was a Radio 4 Book of the Week.
How and why did you decide to start this project? How did you
hear about the Mass Observation Unit? Does it still exist?
SG: I'd love to claim full credit for the birth of Our Hidden Lives,
but I'd feel guilty and get rude phonecalls. The book came about
after one editor at Random House made contact with the Mass Observation
archive at the University of Sussex and thought that there must
be a good book to be made from all that wonderful material. The
editor mentioned it to a colleague who knew of my interest in working
with oral history and personal testimonies, and not long afterwards
I found myself at the Falmer campus near Brighton with my jaw dropping
open...
I first learnt about Mass Observation at school, but knew very
little about it. I knew it was formed in the years before the Second
World War, and that it contained accounts of ordinary people's lives
(people all over the country sent answers to questionnaires and
copies of their diaries each month), but I had no idea about the
range or detail of the material. It had all been carefully documented,
but on my first visit it was hard to know where to start reading:
there were tens of thousands of pages to sift through and many reels
of microfiche. Inevitably I was drawn to the ones I could read easily,
and those who wrote well. The initial and obvious thought was to
do something connected with the war, but then I thought that it
would be more interesting to start looking at the post-war material:
there wasn't so much of it, and the period was studied far less.
Also, I knew relatively little about what happened between 1945-48,
and I became fascinated as soon as I read the first entries. The
most striking thing was how often the diarists wrote 'but I thought
we had won the war...'. The austerity dragged on and on, the weather
got worse and worse, the new Labour Government raised taxes and
imposed restrictions unimagined even in wartime, and people wrote
about it day-to-day as an intrepid British adventure...
How did you choose which diarists to follow?
SG: The original plan was to have nine or ten diarists in the book,
but it soon became clear that this would have entailed editing them
to shreds. Eventually I chose five, and tried to tell the history
of the period through them.
Fortunately, one can also read the book just as five highly engaging
character studies. By the time I had whittled down my choice to
those who were legible, those who wrote throughout the period and
those who wrote more than just 'I got up, went to work, went to
bed,' I was left with about thirty diarists to choose from, and
I then selected what I believed to be the most interesting and engaging
five. It was also important to get a combination of men and women
with different ages, outlooks and locations.
My first thought was to run from VE Day in May 1945 to the Festival
of Britain in 1951, the event long considered the watershed of a
new modern Britain. But the diaries begin to peter out at the end
of the 1940s (though a few Mass Observers wrote until the 1960s),
and I reasoned that the birth of the NHS in 1948 - the pinnacle
of Attlee's reforms - might be a better place to stop. Also, it
meant that the book would be a manageable length, and readers wouldn't
get hernias.
Do you have a favourite diarist, or favourite entry?
SG: I like all five diarists in the book for different reasons.
B Charles is a terrible snob and vilely anti-Semitic, but his entries
are compelling; Maggie Joy Blunt is an intense, astute and lyrical
writer; Edie Rutherford's displays of fortitude are inspiring; George
Taylor's buttoned-down world-view is curmudgeonly, proper and enquiring;
and Herbert Brush is effortlessly and constantly amusing with his
tireless creosoting, brave allotmenteering and furtive desire to
eat sausage rolls in the National Gallery. Everyone who reads the
book seems to find their own things they enjoy and abhor about all
of them. The common link is that they are all being honest, and
write without an eye on future publication. As such, their diaries
are an invaluable, if incomplete guide to what life was really like
at that time.
How do you think the diarists would react to the world today?
SG: None of the diarists are around anymore, but if they were here
today they'd probably be shocked at how cosseted and secure most
of us are in our lives, and how far our standard of living has improved.
They would be confused by the choices we have, and bemused by the
technology. They would see how the NHS and social welfare reforms
that were so novel in their diaries have became a cornerstone of
our society. They probably would have been against the war in Iraq.
Goodness knows what they would have made of email and mobile phones;
I would have like to have seen Herbert Brush tackle both of them.
Do you keep a diary yourself?
SG: I don't keep a diary myself, mostly because I write for a living
and in the evenings I prefer to do something else. Also, I suppose
I think - mistakenly - that my daily emails are a sort of diary.
In the past I think I've believed that 'no one would be interested
in my humdrum life,' but in sixty years time a historian might find
the humdrum details fascinating, just as we do now with the diaries
in Our Hidden Lives. Incidentally, Mass Observation was born again
in the early 1980s, and it is a thriving concern. For more, visit:
www.massobs.org.uk.
Have you met any of the diarists or their family members?
SG: The feedback from the book has predominantly been very positive,
but I've only had direct communication from one relation of one
diarist in the book. I've had some illuminating and enjoyable conversations
with Maggie Joy Blunt's niece, and I'm hopeful that this may lead
to editing some more of her writings in the future.
Can you tell us a bit about what you are currently working on?
SG: My next project, which Ebury/Random House publishes in September,
is called We Are At War, and consists of five more Mass Observation
diaries kept from a few days before the outbreak of the Second World
War to the end of the Battle of Britain. If I say so myself, it's
gripping stuff. There will also be a BBC drama based on Our Hidden
Lives broadcast in the autumn, though sadly no takers yet for my
ultimate ambition - Herbert Brush: The Musical.
|
