Overview

How will the Covid-19 pandemic be remembered? What did it mean to people? How did it feel? This book provides a compelling account of the pandemic as it was experienced in the UK. Everyday Life in the Covid-19 Pandemic is a democratic history based on the 5,000 diaries collected by Mass Observation on 12 May 2020. It is a record of what many of these diarists wrote, from a wide range of positions, in a variety of voices and on a wealth of different subjects. The book shines a light on their lives on the day in question, their experiences during the first two months of the pandemic, and their hopes and fears for the coming months and years. The diaries capture much of everyday life in the pandemic for millions of people in the UK and beyond: the activities, events, and rituals (from funerals to working from home); the sites and stages (from shops to Zoom); the roles and categories (from ‘key workers’ to ‘vulnerable groups’); the frames (from luck to ‘the new normal’); and the moods (from anxiety to grief). In these diaries, we see what people did when the pandemic arrived in the UK, but also what people thought and felt – how they interpreted the pandemic experience and gave it meaning. We see both how the nation responded and the nation who responded. The book also includes two essays offering expert contextualisation of the diaries and discussion of their value for narrating the pandemic and presenting everyday life.

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9781350434707

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Reviews

Early in the 2020 lockdown, Mass Observation asked the UK public to record the extraordinary times. In this innovative collage-style publication, Nick Clarke cleverly unites extracts from 5000 heartbreakingly tragic and devastatingly funny accounts, while skillfully contextualizing the diaries with other pandemic literatures and Mass Observation's own history. Highly recommended. * Annebella Pollen, Professor of Visual and Material Culture, University of Brighton, UK * I defy anyone who lived through the lockdown months of 2020 not to be struck by a lightning bolt of recognition as they read these pages. Nick Clarke has brought us a spellbinding portrait of that time fashioned from the writing of diarists who voluntarily offered their words to the Mass Observation project. It is a symphonic work full of surprising harmonies and tragic dissonances, syncopated by the unbreakable will to keep on keeping on. This is collective writing at its very best. * Ben Highmore, Professor of Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, UK * I read this book with mounting excitement. It takes us right back into the daily routine of the Covid-19 pandemic with the immediacy of a modernist novel. Clarke's framing discussion of Mass Observation makes a compelling case for recasting the sociology of everyday life as a science of the people. * Nick Hubble, Professor of Modern and Contemporary English, Brunel University London, UK *

Early in the 2020 lockdown, Mass Observation asked the UK public to record the extraordinary times. In this innovative collage-style publication, Nick Clarke cleverly unites extracts from 5000 heartbreakingly tragic and devastatingly funny accounts, while skillfully contextualizing the diaries with other pandemic literatures and Mass Observation's own history. Highly recommended. - Annebella Pollen, Professor of Visual and Material Culture, University of Brighton, UK.

Author Information

Nick Clarke is Associate Professor of Human Geography at University of Southampton, UK. His books include The Good Politician (2018) and Globalising Responsibility (2010).

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