The People's Victory

'The VE Day book' Amol Rajan, Today, Radio 4

In 1937, Charles Madge and Tom Harrisson created the social survey organisation Mass Observation to capture the thoughts, feelings, and minutiae of individuals across the British Isles. At its height, Mass Observation had 1,000 concurrent writers—stretching from Penzance to Aberdeen and including miners, academics, and housewives—and collected over 1 million individual diary entries between 1937 and 1960.

In The People's Victory, historian Lucy Noakes mines the Mass Observation archive to present a groundbreaking history of how Britons at home celebrated and experienced the end of World War II. Alongside street celebrations and tea parties, we find bonfires and bell ringing, water fights and wagon rides, solitary and shared walks—and copious amounts 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 still interned in the Far East.

By centring the voices, feelings, and fears of the public at the heart of the People's War, Noakes also traces the hopes and changing attitudes of a nation in flux, revealing how the camaraderie and selflessness of wartime led to the birth of the welfare state.