Surrey Record Society is hosting the following free public lecture at Surrey History Centre on Wednesday 18th July at around 7.30.  You are warmly invited to attend

‘Good news. Hitler is dead. I wonder what sort of reception his astral form has received on the other side’
Mass Observing in World War Two and the Correspondents of Today.

by Kirsty Pattrick, Mass Observation Project Officer, University of Sussex

Mass Observation was a social research organisation, founded in 1937 by three young men, who aimed to create an 'anthropology of ourselves'. They recruited a team of observers and a panel of volunteer writers to study and record the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain. During the tumultuous years of World War II Mass Observation captured people's responses to the unfolding crisis and the fluctuating state of national morale.  The diary submitted by 'Housewife, 49' (Nella Last) was dramatised for television in 2006, with Victoria Wood in the title role. Mass Observation continued this original work until the early 1950s and its records were deposited in the University of Sussex in 1970.  In 1981 it was revived and still collects the responses of observers to contemporary events and social change.

The lecture will follow the annual general meeting of Surrey Record Society which begins at 7pm.  The lecture will not begin until the meeting has finished, which may be a little after 7.30 (but not before).
If you would like to attend please email or phone us to reserve a place.
Surrey History Centre,
130 Goldsworth Road,
Woking,
Surrey
GU21 6ND
01483 518737
shs@surreycc.gov.uk       
www.surreycc.gov.uk/surreyhistorycentre