i knew next-to-nothing about Mass-Observation before reading this book, simply placing it, with certain big-band, whispering hotel trumpet tunes, as part of the stock marginalia of the thirties, lingering in my mind as one of those exercises in journalistic, impressionistic sociology to “present the people to the people”, like Gaumont British News. This, of course, was a travesty of what Mass-Observation was up to, and I’ve been back to some of its earlier work: stimulating, amateurish, purposeful, something, clearly, which, because of the time, was sharp enough for use and deep enough to lie under the rotting skeins of habitual complacency about British life and work. M-O claimed to make “objective descriptions”, whatever that might mean, but, because it had many of the techniques of the novelist and documentary film maker, appeared able to present situations which could speak for themsleves, to cut through to the vivid or dramatic or the “ordinary” in rather selfconscious parenthesis and so avoid the mess of confused, opposing complexities that always crowd in on any social condition. Wodges of figures now give the feeling of tarted-up impressionism, the “justification” for the literary streaks, though Professor Charles Madge, in a Postscript, remarks that “even as a socialist, I felt I must put sociology first.” Even as sociologists, the M-O writers seemed then to be valuing their own experiences first, and that’s one sign of change, for the purpose and immediacy has almost disappeared in this book. It was a good idea to return to some of the scenes of those earlier investigations and plot the changes, but an irritating hash has emerged. M-O is not the constant agent, of course, eye-witnessing change or discovering unchange, and one of the differences between Britain immediately after the war and Britain now hides behind the tasks M-O has had to complete—

1946: Modern Homes Exhibition (Note and Counts); World Organisation and the Future; Stevenage Satellite Town; Salvation Army; Drinking Habits; Black widow Posters; Famous People; The Hotel Strike; Holiday Weather; People Feel 1939–45; Anti-Semitism & Free Speech; Trade Unions & Closed Shop; Paratroops Mutiny; Implications of Peckham; The Squatters; Popular Attitudes to Palestine and Arab countries.

1959: Teenage Shirts; Household Soap; Foot Treatment; Ice Cream; Attitudes to Bread; Pies and Sausages; Bookshops; Pork Joints; Attitude to Gardening and Gardening Products; Cats; British Typewriters; Instant Coffee.