Everyday life in the Covid-19 pandemic: Mass Observation's 12th May diaries

Clarke, Nick (ed.) (2024) Everyday life in the Covid-19 pandemic: Mass Observation's 12th May diaries (The Mass-Observation Critical Series), London. Bloomsbury Academic, 312pp.

Record type: Book

Abstract

How will the COVID-19 pandemic be remembered? What did it mean to people? How did it feel? This book provides an account of the pandemic as it was experienced in the UK. It provides a democratic account based on the 5,000 diaries collected by Mass Observation on 12th May 2020. These diarists write from a wide range of positions, in a wide range of voices. They write about 12th May 2020, 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 subject positions (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. An experiment in narrating the pandemic and presenting everyday life, the book includes two essays discussing and situating this experiment.

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