Review
Jenny Uglow
Tony Benn
John Carey in The Sunday Times
Book Description
Peter Kemp, Sunday Times
Observer
Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday
The Guardian
Gerald Kaufman, Evening Standard
Product Description
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
(20040624)From the Publisher
From the Author
About the Author
Excerpted from Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Postwar Britain by Simon Garfield. Copyright © 2005. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
‘And now – Oh, what wonderful luck! At this moment . . . at this moment, how wonderful, Mr Churchill has come out onto the Ministry of Health balcony . . . he’s wearing his boiler suit . . . and he has the audacity, shall I say, to put on his head his famous black hat. Nobody can say that it goes with the boiler suit, but you heard what a cheer it raised from the crowd!’
BBC radio broadcast, 8 May 1945
‘God bless you all. This is your victory! It is the victory of the cause of freedom in every land. In all our long history we have never seen a greater day than this. Everyone, man or woman, has done their best. Everyone has tried. Neither the long years, nor the dangers, nor the fierce attacks of the enemy, have in any way weakened the independent resolve of the British nation. God bless you all.’
Winston Churchill from the balcony
TUESDAY, 1 MAY 1945
Maggie Joy Blunt
Freelance writer and publicity officer in metal factory, living in Burnham Beeches, near Slough
Important hours, important as those days at the end of August in 1939 preceding the declaration of war. This is tension of a different kind, expectancy, preparations being made for a change in our way of living. But the tempo is slower. We wait, without anxiety, for the official announcement by Mr Churchill that is to herald two full days’ holiday and the beginning of another period of peace in Europe. We wait wondering if Hitler is dying or dead or will commit suicide or be captured and tried and shot, and what his henchman are doing and feeling.
All the women of my acquaintance have strongly disapproved today of the treatment of the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress. I heard one man in the sales department when he was told that the bodies had been hung up by the feet say glibly ‘Good thing too!’ But RW and myself and Lys and Miss M are shocked and disgusted. Spitting on the bodies, shooting at them, seems childish and barbarous, and such actions cannot bring the dead to life or repair damage and is a poor sort of vengeance. What a state the world is in and what a poor outlook for the future.
I have worn myself out spring cleaning the sitting room. All Sunday and yesterday at it – it now looks so brilliant and beautiful I’ll never dare live in it.
We had ice cream in canteen for lunch today – the first for two or is it three years?
George Taylor
Accountant in Sheffield
I noticed that the flags which were flying on the Town Hall yesterday, presumably in preparation for peace, have been taken down. Apparently the officials were premature in their preparations.
WEDNESDAY, 2 MAY
Maggie Joy Blunt
One can hardly keep pace with the news. ‘Hitler Dead’ the News Chronicle informed me this morning in 12-inch type across the front page. Doenitz has either been appointed to succeed him or has seized power over Himmler’s head . . . We discussed the situation all through lunch, wondering how much longer the war would now continue with Doenitz in control. At the office an atmosphere of suspense but little obvious excitement.
George Taylor
News of Hitler’s death has caused little stir. I never heard it mentioned on my tram journeys to and from work, none of the clients I met breathed his name, and the only person who mentioned him to me was my thirty-two-year-old colleague. He doubted very much his death, but I said that in my opinion he was indeed dead, but that he had died from natural causes and not in the fighting.
I was completely surprised at 9.10 a.m. to hear of the surrender of the German forces in Italy. It has been a well-kept secret, and I should have been less surprised by a surrender in the West. Events are certainly moving now.
Herbert Brush
Retired electrical engineer, south-east London
Good news. Hitler is really dead. I wonder what sort of reception his astral form has received on the other side.
I can imagine when he came
And when his victims heard his name
They gathered round him not to miss
So good a chance to hoot and hiss
But those on earth may all agree
From torture he must not go free
That God Almighty has some plan
To punish such a naughty man
THURSDAY, 3 MAY
Maggie Joy Blunt
RW had a violent argument with a young woman (A) who works in our firm. RW says that her ears turn scarlet when she gets excited in conversation and when she came upstairs immediately after this scene they were as brilliant as cherries. A is quite unbalanced as to what should be done with war criminals. She thinks they should all be shot without a trial and in some cases tortured. She would like to have seen very special torture done to Hitler and one of her suggestions was pulling out his eyes with knitting needles. When RW declared she would never do it if she actually had the opportunity, she did say she would want someone else to do it. She is a bright, intelligent, friendly person and an amusing conversationalist. One would not expect her capable of such savage inclinations. But she is Jewish and there is I suppose in all of us still a streak of the savage. I remember once dreaming of my father – seeing him, thin, pale, tottering as he was during his last fatal illness,!
being pushed about by someone most brutally. And in my dream I just went mad with rage and I attacked the attacker without mercy.
DJ gave me the afternoon off. About 8 p.m. the rain turned to snow. I ate my supper watching the enormous snowflakes fall, wondering if any other country in the world could present such
