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Seven Lives From Mass Observation by James Hinton
The Blurb On The Back:
What was it like to live in Britain during the second half of the twentieth century? In a successor to his acclaimed Nine Wartime Lives: Mass Observation and the Making of the Modern Self, James Hinton uses autobiographical writing contributed to Mass Observation since 1981 to explore the social and cultural history of late-twentieth-century Britain. Prompted by thrice-yearly open-ended questionnaires, Mass Observation’s volunteers wrote about their political attitudes, religious beliefs, work, childhoods, education, friendships, marriages, sex lives, mid-life crises, ageing - the whole range of human emotion, feeling, attitudes, and experience. At the core of the book are seven ‘biographical essays’: intimate portraits of individual lives set in the context of the shift towards a more tolerant and permissive society from the 1960s, and the rise of Thatcherite neo-liberalism as the structures of Britain’s post-war settlement crumbles from the later 1970s.
The mass observers featured in the book, four women and three men, are drawn from across the social spectrum - wife of a small businessman, teacher, social worker, RAF wife, mechanic, lorry driver, banker: all active and forceful characters with strong opinions and lives crowded with struggle and drama. The honesty and frankness with which they wrote about themselves takes us below the surface of public life to the efforts of ‘ordinary’, but exceptionally articulate and self-reflective, people to make sense of their lives in rapidly changing times.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
James Hinton is Professor Emeritus at Warwick University with expertise on 20th century British social history. Using 7 contributors to the Mass Observation project (which has been running since 1981) this absorbing and moving book assesses attitudes to the societal and economic changes of the 80s and 90s (albeit with caveats as to the reliability of the opinions expressed given that it’s a self-reporting project) and made me want to read more.
What was it like to live in Britain during the second half of the twentieth century? In a successor to his acclaimed Nine Wartime Lives: Mass Observation and the Making of the Modern Self, James Hinton uses autobiographical writing contributed to Mass Observation since 1981 to explore the social and cultural history of late-twentieth-century Britain. Prompted by thrice-yearly open-ended questionnaires, Mass Observation’s volunteers wrote about their political attitudes, religious beliefs, work, childhoods, education, friendships, marriages, sex lives, mid-life crises, ageing - the whole range of human emotion, feeling, attitudes, and experience. At the core of the book are seven ‘biographical essays’: intimate portraits of individual lives set in the context of the shift towards a more tolerant and permissive society from the 1960s, and the rise of Thatcherite neo-liberalism as the structures of Britain’s post-war settlement crumbles from the later 1970s.
The mass observers featured in the book, four women and three men, are drawn from across the social spectrum - wife of a small businessman, teacher, social worker, RAF wife, mechanic, lorry driver, banker: all active and forceful characters with strong opinions and lives crowded with struggle and drama. The honesty and frankness with which they wrote about themselves takes us below the surface of public life to the efforts of ‘ordinary’, but exceptionally articulate and self-reflective, people to make sense of their lives in rapidly changing times.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
James Hinton is Professor Emeritus at Warwick University with expertise on 20th century British social history. Using 7 contributors to the Mass Observation project (which has been running since 1981) this absorbing and moving book assesses attitudes to the societal and economic changes of the 80s and 90s (albeit with caveats as to the reliability of the opinions expressed given that it’s a self-reporting project) and made me want to read more.