The Remarkable Diaries of Postwar Britain

Our Hidden Lives

Beautifully repackaged paperback edition of critically acclaimed hardback

I haven't read a more engrossing book in years ... a triumph of sympathetic editing

These are invaluable records of quiet lives, sometimes despairing, often moving, occasionally bitter, frequently prescient. Occasionally they are just plain funny

***** - Diaries that will rewrite our history ... Our Hidden Lives intertwines modest private lives with historic public events and is by turns poignant, shocking, informative and very funny

A fascinating and moving portrait of ordinary lives in extraordinary times ... 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

A quite magical store of voices from another age

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

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

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

There can be no better book than Our Hidden Lives ... Readers of other people's diaries will revel in this delicious book

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

A fascinating treasure-trove of daily-life details which make the rigours and triumphs of this overlooked time come alive

Nothing less than a sharp snapshot of Britain's history

The year's most readable book, a rich trove of entertainment and instruction

Funny, moving, fascinating and utterly irresistible

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

An engrossing account of post-war austerity

They evoke the poverty and harshness but also the hope and stoicism of those years immediately after the Second World War

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

We, the readers, become engrossed in their stories and lives

A quiet but vivid account of an under-reported era of British life

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

Stitched together by Garfield's masterful editing, the entries create a beguiling snapshot of a period that has often been overshadowed

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

I love these diaries. They have the attraction of being stories, but Real stories ... Better than any novel

A lovely book. It will appeal to ... anyone who appreciates the richness and diversity of human experience

Utterly engrossing, better than any kind of reality TV

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

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.

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

Simon Garfield

Fascinating, delightful, illuminating. The diarists soon become like old friends ... and make our wartime past seem no more distant than yesterday

It's always easy to imagine people in this period becalmed in a sepia-toned limbo. This book tells the messy, but far more interesting, truth

Few books have so successfully stepped inside the minds of the British people during wartime

A fascinating account of everyday life in Britain

One closes the books with the odd sense of saying farewell to a group of interesting and interestingly different individuals one might have encountered on a long journey

I love these diaries. They have the attraction of being stories, but REAL stories - better than any novel

The Diaries of Five Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times

Of all the accounts written about the Second World War, none are more compelling than the personal diaries of those who lived through it. We Are At War is the story of five everyday folk, who, living on the brink of chaos, recorded privately on paper their most intimate hopes and fears. 
 
Pam Ashford, a woman who keeps her head when all around are losing theirs, writes with comic genius about life in her Glasgow shipping office. Christopher Tomlin, a writing-paper salesman for whom business is booming, longs to be called up like his brother. Eileen Potter organises evacuations for flea-ridden children, while mother-of-three Tilly Rice is frustrated to be sent to Cornwall. And Maggie Joy Blunt tries day-by-day to keep a semblance of her ordinary life. 
 
Entering their world as they lived it, each diary entry is poignantly engrossing. Amid the tumultuous start to the war, these ordinary British people are by turns apprehensive and despairing, spirited and cheerful - and always fascinatingly, vividly real.

Simon Garfield

Praise for We Are At War

Wonderful stuff

Fascinating, delightful, illuminating. The diarists soon become like old friends ... and make our wartime past seem no more distant than yesterday

It's always easy to imagine people in this period becalmed in a sepia-toned limbo. This book tells the messy, but far more interesting, truth

Wonderful stuff

Fascinating, delightful, illuminating. The diarists soon become like old friends ... and make our wartime past seem no more distant than yesterday

It's always easy to imagine people in this period becalmed in a sepia-toned limbo. This book tells the messy, but far more interesting, truth

Wonderful stuff

Fascinating, delightful, illuminating. The diarists soon become like old friends ... and make our wartime past seem no more distant than yesterday

It's always easy to imagine people in this period becalmed in a sepia-toned limbo. This book tells the messy, but far more interesting, truth

Books by Simon Garfield

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