Customer Reviews:
 Coping with the Everyday in a Dangerous World August 10, 2008
Graceann Macleod (London, UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Continuing the thread begun in Hidden Lives, Simon Garfield offers selections from the Mass-Observation Project diaries of five people caught up in the preparations and then the beginning of the infamous Blitz. The uncertainty, the anger, the fear; it's all here and it leaps off of the pages in a way that keeps you turning them.
Sometimes the diarists are not particularly likeable - you encounter racism and defeatist attitudes at certain points. But that is something that makes this volume particularly interesting. Knowing that these pages are going to be read by others, the diarists are still painfully honest in their fears and their prejudices. Very enlightening, and highly recommended, especially as a companion volume to Hidden Lives.
 Enthralling December 30, 2007
Helena (UK)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I read each person's account seperately, as they were becoming muddled in my mind. I was struck by the differences between four of the diarists and "Eileen Potter". Why was she included I wonder? All the others had fascinating, interesting tales to tell of their ordinary lives. Hers, by comparison was very dull and was also the most incomplete. With the other four I felt I knew them and had a deep interest in how they ended up in life.
Reading the four complete diaries was an engrossing experience. How different these people were to each other and how similar they are to people today. Nothing much changes, does it? I see that there is another book just published and I shall be buying that one, too.
Fascinating Glimpse of the Past December 12, 2007
Paul M. Wright (London, UK)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Very involving and eye-opening view of the past from the grassroots rather than the usual historical overview. I really got involved with some of the characters' lives and immediately started on 'Our Hidden Lives' when I finished.
A real time-machine! November 28, 2005
D. C. Gowans (UK)
47 out of 48 found this review helpful
The unfolding drama of wartime life is captured faithfully in these first-hand accounts. I wonder what would be the reaction of the diarists to know that in sixty years time their submissions to Mass Observation would be printed and made into a book. I suspect they would secretly be quite pleased that their efforts would be enjoyed by future generations - a kind of immortality. I was particularly moved by Christopher Tomlin's honest descriptions of the struggle to keep his family afloat financially while coping with the anxiety and sleeplessness of incipient invasion. A different world indeed.
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