Our Hidden Lives

The result is a moving, intriguing, funny, at times heartbreaking book - unashamedly populist in the spirit of Forgotten Voices or indeed Margaret Forster's Diary of an Ordinary Woman. 'I love these diaries.

Simon Garfield

"I haven't read a more engrossing book in years ... a triumph of sympathetic editing" Sunday Times "These are invaluable records of quiet lives, sometimes despairing, often moving, occasionally bitter, frequently prescient. Occasionally they are just plain funny" Sunday Telegraph "* - Diaries that will rewrite our history ... Our Hidden Lives intertwines modest private lives with historic public events and is by turns poignant, shocking, informative and very funny" Mail on Sunday "A fascinating and moving portrait of ordinary lives in extraordinary times ... I could not put this book down. Over the course of its 500 or so pages, its characters almost became friends. Once I'd finished the book I missed them" -- Melanie McGrath Evening Standard "A quite magical store of voices from another age" Observer 20041010