One woman’s view of the austerity of the post-war years
Shortly before the start of World War Two, Nella Last, a Cumbrian housewife, joined the Mass Observation Project. Her role was to record her day-to-day experiences in a diary. It recently became the basis for the television drama, Housewife, 49. At the end of the war, when many others in the Project stopped writing their diaries, Nella continued and it became one of the longest diaries in the English language. Jane is joined by Professor Dorothy Sheridan, Director of the Mass Observation Archive and by historian David Kynaston to discuss Nella’s diaries and the insights they give us into the austerity of everyday life in post-war Britain.
Nella’s Last Peace Edited by Patricia and Robert Malcolmson ISBN978-1-84668-074-8 Austerity Britain 1945 – 1951 by David Kynaston is published by Bloomsbury ISBN 978-0747599234
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