Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Postwar Britain Paperback – 7 April 2005
Simon Garfield . Ebury Press . English
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
Categories: Action & Adventure
About the Author
London-based writer Simon Garfield is a social historian and the author or editor of more than 20 books of non-fiction. His bestsellers include Just My Type, On The Map, Mauve and the Wrestling. His next book, The Pen: A Human History, will be published in autumn 2026. Garfield writes with wit and literary flair. His titles often reflect the tensions between the analogue and digital worlds, examining what we have lost and gained over the last twenty years. His books cover a diverse array of subjects, ranging from the award-winning history of Aids in Britain, The End of Innocence, to a history of letter writing, which was one of the inspirations for the theatre show Letters Live with Benedict Cumberbatch. His other labour of love is A Notable Woman, the edited lifetime journals of the remarkable Jean Lucey Pratt, whom readers first met (when she was named Maggie Joy Blunt) in Garfield's three popular collections of diaries from the Mass Observation Archive. Jean began her journal in 1925 when she was 15, and maintained it until a few weeks before her death in 1986. Much of Garfield's work considers topics we may often take for granted. Timekeepers examines the history of our ever-accelerating world, and his last book, All the Knowledge in the World, is a history of the encyclopaedia from Ancient Greece to Wikipedia. Simon Garfield was born in London in 1960. His supports the typeface Albertus and the football club Chelsea. He enjoys the work of Tracy Kidder, Elizabeth Strout, Michael Chabon and Kate Atkinson, and is seldom disappointed by The Kills, The National, Elvis Costello or Lucy Dacus.
