Mass Observing the Coronation of Charles III

An exploration of how the coronation of Charles III was experienced as a social and cultural event using the views and writings collected by Mass Observation.

Jennifer J. Purcell is Professor of History at Saint Michael's College in Vermont, USA. Using Mass-Observation diaries and directives, her first book, Domestic Soldiers (2010), seeks to understand the day-to-day lives of six women on the home front during the Second World War. She is also the author of Mother of the BBC: Mabel Constanduros and the Development of Light Entertainment on the BBC, 1925-1957 (Bloomsbury, 2020) and editor of Mass Observation: Text, Context and Analysis of the Pioneering Pamphlet and Movement (Bloomsbury, 2023) and Reflections on British Royalty: Mass Observation and the Monarchy, 1937-2022 (with Fiona Courage; Bloomsbury, 2024).
Lucy D. Curzon is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Alabama, USA. She is the author of Visual Culture and Mass Observation: Depicting Everyday Lives (2017), which was awarded the Historians of British Art Book Prize for a single-authored book with a subject after 1800. With Ben Jones, she co-edited The Historical Contexts and Contemporary Uses of Mass Observation: 1930s to the Present (2025). She has previously published work on contemporary queer portrait painting and photography, British women war artists, the Ashington Group and Humphrey Spender.
Fiona Courage is Head of Collections and Academic Services & Curator of the Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex, UK. Her publications include 'Recipes for co-production with children and young people' in Time, Technology and Documentation in a Digital Age (Bloomsbury, 2018; with Liam Berriman and Kate Howland) and 'Mass Observing Sport' in Recording Leisure Lives: sports, spectacles and spectators in 20th century Britain (2013; with Jessica Scantlebury).