Seven Lives from Mass Observation, by James Hinton

Abstract

This book by James Hinton follows his Nine Wartime Lives (2010) in its method, form and concerns. In that book, Hinton took nine of the individuals who kept diaries for Mass Observation (MO) during the Second World War, devoting nine chapters to biographical studies of each. A central theme of the book was the growth of currents of individualism and democratisation in British society: Hinton saw these diarists as in the vanguard of a developing self-reflexivity that would come to be dominant by the late twentieth century. In his new book, he takes seven individuals who contributed to the revived Mass Observation Project (MOP) for twenty-five years or more after 1981 and constructs biographies of each in seven central chapters, in order to explore the social and cultural revolutions of the twentieth century from the perspective of the individual. The subjects of Hinton’s seven case-studies were all born between 1921 and 1934, and come from a range of backgrounds and occupations. Four are women: the wife of a small businessman from West London, a schoolteacher from South London, a social worker who lived in Surrey and Yorkshire, and the wife of an RAF pilot who lived in Hertfordshire and South Wales. Three are men: a mechanic and manager from North London and Sussex, a lorry driver from North London and Essex, and a banker who lived in the south-east.