The Economist December 18th 2021 Holiday specials 29
The content changes too, slowly but perceptibly, as
social mores and attitudes shift. In 1987 a directive
asked Observers’ reactions to a government informa
tion campaign about aids. Some expressed sympathy
for victims, but several bluntly shared their distaste
for the perceived promiscuity of gay life. One suggest
ed a campaign “explaining in no uncertain terms the
dangers of going gay”. Another included a slew of jokes
about aids. Their missives are uncomfortable to read
today, but preserve the contemporary attitudes of
some Britons more honestly than newspapers that
would have excised such “humour” on taste grounds.
In 2000, “R1468”, a 77yearold widow from Derby,
responded to a directive about “gays and the family” by
admitting “It is only over the past ten years or so that I
have become aware of the number of gays and lesbians
in the community.” In fact, she goes on, “One of my
nephews may be gay.” Though now in his fifties, he re
mained in the closet, as far as she knew: “The family
have not openly admitted that he is gay, different
members have just hinted at it that’s all. He is loved for
himself.” By 2019 things had changed to such an extent
that several Observers felt no need for distancing in
verted commas when replicating the directive’s own
phraseology of “lgbt+ identities”.signing off
When Pocock retired, Ms Sheridan worried that the
Observers, too, might deem the correspondence
closed. Many did seem to get a thrill from having their
opinions taken seriously by a professor. Pocock had
tried to reply to letters personally, especially if some
body had celebrated a birthday, say, or their dog had
died. Mr Allison regularly received postcards from Po
cock, even during a sentence for a millionpound
fraud. He credits Mass Observation in part for giving
him confidence as a writer. Years later, a friend point
ed out that theGuardian was advertising for a new pri
sons correspondent. He got the job. Pocock sent his
congratulations—in the post, of course.
Even so, Ms Sheridan need not have worried. The
project survived Pocock’s retirement, and his death, in2007. It will surely outlast her, too: she retired in 2010,
but the Observers show no signs of tiring. Mr Allison
has now been contributing for 38 years: theGuardian
keeps him busy, but he still likes to respond to the lat
est directives when he can. Observers were prolific
during covid19, their diaries and accounts more re
flective and less transient than tweets or Facebook
posts (though posterity could perhaps have been
spared the comprehensive account one Observer gave
of “the cloth system” used during a shortage of loo
rolls). Their ranks swelled from 483 to 755 during the
first few months of the pandemic, perhaps because
people understood the value of contemporaneous ac
counts of momentous times or perhaps because they
had a lot of time on their hands.
Some Observers take to heart Pocock’s insistence
that they are writing history, in which “each tiny piece
is integral to an intricate and luminous whole, and the
ordinary transformed into the extraordinary”. Others
just seem glad to get something off their chests. As one
wrote in 1990, after Ms Sheridan announced Pocock’s
retirement, “Until the man with the scythe turns up, or
you decide you’ve had enoughof me, I shall send in my
chatterings. Warmest goodwishes to the Archivist and
all the team—from E1510.”n
swer the questions that all the statistics on what we do
leave begging. It will fill in the gaps.”
One gap remained, however. Pocock seemed em
barrassed to ask his Observers about the most intimate
aspects of their lives even though these are often the
least chronicled. Their responses to his directives,
from gardening to geopolitics, sometimes made for
dry reading, leavened a little with humour (“I think it is
undesirable for Europe to become a third major pow
er” alongside America and Russia, wrote one corre
spondent in the mid1980s. “Two idiots are suffi
cient”). But it took Ms Sheridan’s prompting for them
to become more reflective and personal. One of her
first directives after Pocock’s retirement asked about
the meaning of the word “love”. “You may feel that this
is a subject which is too intimate to write about,” her
covering letter acknowledged.
They did not. Encouraged by Ms Sheridan, they
went on to tackle ageing, menstruation, “women and
men”, pleasure and bereavement. Ms Sheridan and her
successors stopped apologising for the skewed nature
of the sample (at the last count, about threequarters
female): they were proud to house such a collection of
frank writing by women about topics not always open
ly discussed. Liberated by anonymity and free of the
formality of an interview, the Observers wrote as if
confiding in a diary or a therapist.
The results are unvarnished and very human: it is
not unusual for a researcher bent over a grey archive
box to stifle a giggle or wipe their eyes. Fiona Courage,
the project’s current director, likes to bring the univer
sity’s students to look at responses to the directive on
“having an affair”. At first, she says, the room is full of
embarrassed laughter. Soon, though, it falls silent, as
the students realise they are reading about real lives,
usually imperfect ones.
In one response a 53yearold doctoradmitted that
she “committed adultery 16 months after I was mar
ried”. “I still don’t know what went wrong but [my hus
band] just stopped being interested in me,” she wrote.
“I remember once I bought black sexy underwear and
when he saw me in it he burst out laughing.” After the
affair, with a “really attractive man at work”, she felt
“dreadful and wicked” and at last confessed to her hus
band. Their loveless marriage lasted 16 years.
Another Observer, an 83yearold widow, wrote
from her care home to confess to dating two men si
multaneously 40 years previously. And, though she
stayed faithful throughout her subsequent marriage,
“There were times when I was tempted to have a ‘fling’
with an attractive man.”
Replies to a directive on “being overweight” were
equally candid. Everybody, it seemed, was unhappy
with her or his appearance. “R2247”, a 49yearold Lon
doner who admitted to being overweight despite her
boyfriend’s insistence she was “voluptuous”, com
plained that “‘fatism’ is as pernicious in Britain as rac
ism and sexism”. “I know all about being overweight,”
a 57yearold from Aberystwyth replied. “I have strug
gled since I was 18 and it is a perpetual battle.” Another
wrote that she was “selfconscious about being too
thin, but you never see that in women’s magazines!”
Box by box, the reader becomes aware of time pass
ing. Fountain pens give way to biros; more responses
are typed, first on typewriters then computers. (Some
resist: the retired hospital administrator writes neat
replies in blue ink on cream Basildon Bond paper.)
Fountain pens
give way to
biros; more
responses are
typed, first on
typewriters
then computers