In 1937, bemused at British newspapers making opposing claims about 'national feeling' and the 'will of the people', Cambridge graduates Charles Madge and Tom Harrisson created the social survey organisation Mass Observation to capture the thoughts, feelings and minutiae of daily life across the British Isles. With 1000 concurrent writers at its height - stretching from Penzance to Aberdeen and including miners, academics and housewives - and over 1 million individual diary entries between 1937-1960, Mass Observation is the largest and richest collection of British social history on record.
In Two Days in May, historian Lucy Noakes mines the Mass Observation archive to present a comprehensive, colourful and groundbreaking history of how Britons at home experienced and celebrated the end of World War II. Alongside street celebrations and tea parties we find bonfires and bell ringing, water fights and wagon rides, solitary, contemplative walks - and a hell of a lot of alcohol. However, as Noakes also reveals, not everyone felt like celebrating that May: many were still waiting for news of family members who had vanished in the fog of war, whilst thousands of British soldiers were interned in the Far East.
Much mythologised as a period of mass jubilation - the culmination of Britain's 'finest hour' - Two Days in May challenges this narrative, tracing the hopes and changing attitudes of a country in flux and centring the voices, feelings and fears of the people at the heart of the People's War.