What COVID diaries have in common with Samuel Pepys’ 17th-century plague diaries: Ground Picture/Shutterstock People keep diaries for all sorts of reasons – to record events, work through difficult situations, or manage stress and trauma. The ongoing COVID inquiry shows diaries also have important political and historic significance. The UK’s former chief scientific adviser Patrick …
Matt Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries and the history of the redemptive memoir: Matt Hancock has achieved fame in recent months for devouring a cow anus live on television (during his I’m A Celebrity stint) and for releasing questionable TikTok videos cringing about his past “embarrassing” moments. Some will recall that before all this, he was once …
Climate change: colonial diaries in South Africa are helping scientists reconstruct weather patterns of the past to protect against future events: A copy of the VOC's registers for April 1789. These daily registers contained rich detail – including about the weather. Tracing History Trust The current climate crisis raises many questions. Some are forward-looking: how …
A culture of silence and stigma around emotions dominates policing, officer diaries reveal: When you are a police officer, your emotions have to be hidden or pushed down. Officers work hard to detach themselves from their emotions as a way to cope in a culture that has an expectation of silence in the face of …
How 18th-century weather diaries shed light on the effects of an Icelandic volcanic eruption on Scotland: Joschenbacher/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA On June 15 1783, Dr John Purcell went outside his house in Edinburgh, looked up at the clouds and wrote in his diary how dark and gloomy the sky was. The dark skies, he reported, continued …
Lockdown diaries: the everyday voices of the coronavirus pandemic: Shutterstock/Teechai A diary is by its very nature an intensely personal thing. It’s a place to record our most intimate thoughts and worries about the world around us. In other words, it is a glimpse at our state of mind. Now, the coronavirus pandemic, and the …
Ivan Maisky’s diaries offer a spying masterclass that is still relevant today: In the years leading up to World War II, Ivan Maisky and Winston Churchill developed a close friendship. Courtesy of the Voskressenski family, Author provided The announcement of the return from the cold of John Le Carré’s George Smiley in a forthcoming new …
Introducing Alice and Timmy’s Electronic Picture Diaries, a new series inspired by Facebook Manners And You! Ever wondered what it would be like if there were webcams in the 1950’s? This new series chronicles the romance of America’s favorite post-war couple, Alice Johnson and Timmy Gordon, stars of Facebook Manners And You! Follow Alice and …