At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, Becky Brown published Blitz Spirit, a fascinating collection of diary entries by volunteers from the general public into a government scheme called Mass Observation. Beginning in 1937 and running until 1950, this archive is a cacophony of musings from a wide variety of people, capturing their first-hand responses to World War Two. Brown begins each section with some political and social commentary to provide context on the movement of the war as it progressed, noting how the general mood seemed to shift in ebbs and flows - quite apart from the published records full of propaganda.
All the way through, the book filled me with conflicting emotions - I felt simultaneously relieved and unnerved by the revelation that despite all our technical advances in the last nine decades, humanity really hasn’t changed that much at all. In fact I agree with her, that many of these diary entries could be swapped out with content from social media feeds from 2020, and you wouldn’t know the difference. Ordinary people in extraordinary times respond with resounding adaptability, humour and honesty. Despite the fact the the NHS was still a dream and women didn’t yet have equal rights, people wrote in about their mental health with transparency and supported housewives working for the war effort. Refugees were a topic of both deep compassion and minor grumbling, though in their case refugees were often British (moving from the city to the countryside). People picked up new hobbies to wile away the hours locked down in shelters, and many pondered the usefulness of their government.
I’ve pulled out some of my favourite extracts below:
On the advice and direction of a broadcaster on ‘Knitting for men’. I have reached half way on my first ‘creation’ - a vest, and am very proud of it.
We are supposed to be fighting for for democracy, but it seems as if democracy has lost its voice in England! For the newspapers and wireless are no indication of what people are thinking.
I must have indulged in too much news yesterday, and as a ‘defense reaction’ I am steering clear of the papers today.
Met Mrs T ‘the nice lady’, & we talked. She wants to chuck out the whole of Parliament, & have some fresh blood, including women. She would like to see an all-women parliament!”
In my own case, this loss of what is left to me of my Home, seems to have cut me adrift from the future as well as the past: I just don’t belong anywhere.
This book is surprisingly gripping, and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in anthropology, Britain in World War Two, or our very human ways of seeing the world in chaotic and difficult times.