We asked respondents to estimate the proportion of UK immigration in each of these categories [By giving them 100 points to split between 4 categories] Asylum: estimate 37% (actual: 7%) Family: estimate 17% (actual 6%) Work: estimate 26% (actual 40%) Study: estimate 19% (actual 38%)

In our book The Good Politician, one of the themes from the Mass Observation social diaries was an increasing demand from citizens that politicians be both ‘ordinary’ and extraordinary (competent, brilliant, charismatic, etc). Something of a tension.

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief, The Lancet:   The immense toll of death during the COVID-19 pandemic brought us face to face with life … Thanks to Nick Clarke, there is now an opportunity to reconsider the importance of the lives around us … It is a magnificent piece of work.

Nick Hubble:   I read this book with mounting excitement. It takes us right back into … the Covid-19 pandemic with the immediacy of a modernist novel. Clarke’s framing discussion … makes a compelling case for recasting the sociology of everyday life as a science of the people.

Annebella Pollen:   Nick Clarke cleverly unites extracts from 5000 heartbreakingly tragic and devastatingly funny accounts, while skilfully contextualising the diaries with other pandemic literatures and Mass Observation’s own history. Highly recommended.

Here’s an endorsement from Ben Highmore:   Nick Clarke has brought us a spellbinding portrait … It is a symphonic work full of surprising harmonies and tragic dissonances, syncopated by the unbreakable will to keep on keeping on. This is collective writing at its very best.

Here’s a YouTube video summarising the book project.   www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytx0...

Book Launch for 'Everyday Life in the Covid-19 Pandemic' by Nick Clarke

Hear Nick Clarke talk about the process behind researching and writing his new book. Book Description:'How will the Covid-19 pandemic be remembered? What did...

Here’s a blogpost summarising the book project.   covidresponsibility.org/2024/05/10/e...

Everyday Life in the Covid-19 Pandemic: Mass Observation’s 12th May Diaries

This book will be published by Bloomsbury on 16 May 2024 (see https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/everyday-life-in-the-covid19-pandemic-9781350434691/). Below, I provide a summary. Before that, let me see i...

My commentary, featuring @citiesandstuff.bsky.socialjournals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

For more on the book, see www.bloomsbury.com/uk/everyday-...

Everyday Life in the Covid-19 Pandemic

How will the Covid-19 pandemic be remembered? What did it mean to people? How did it feel? This book provides a compelling account of the pandemic as it was exp…