Exciting new 20th Century Volume

26th October 2016

Volume 153 - A Londoner in Lancashire - is an exciting new volume from the Society that reproduces major selections of a the wartime diary of Annie Beatrice Holness, who was evacuated from Barnet in North London to Morecambe in Lancashire. Annie Holness was a middle-aged civil servant who began a diary for Mass Observation, a social research project that had begun in 1937. Her thoughtful and observant diary records everyday life in all its detailed diversity - her billet, her enjoyable country walks, her sometimes dreary job, her usually gratifying leisure activities (night classes, music, theatre, her allotment), the congestion and the sights and sounds of wartime Lancashire. She often lamented feeling like an 'exile' in Morecambe and returned to London after the war ended, but she could not stay away and two years later came back to settle permanently in Lancashire. This volume will be fascinating to many people interested not just in Lancashire history but in the reality of life in wartime Britain.