Work Town

In the late 1930s the Lancashire town of Bolton witnessed a groundbreaking social experiment. Over three years, a team of ninety observers recorded, in painstaking detail, the everyday lives of ordinary working people at work and play - in the pub, dance hall, factory, and on holiday. Their aim was to create an 'anthology of ourselves'. The first of its kind, it later grew into the Mass Observation movement that proved so crucial to our understanding of public opinion in future generations. Drawing on reports, photographs, and first-hand sources, David Hall relates the story of this eccentric, short-lived, but hugely influential project.