It was snowing and the heating had broken the day I visited the Mass Observation Archive in Brighton. I sat in my coat, woolly hat and fingerless gloves, my breath clouding the air. Before me were nearly two hundred anonymous letters written in 2007, most by hand, reflecting on the “ups and downs” of friendship.
Mass Observation is a treasure trove for historians like me. Since 1939, it has sent out loose questionnaires called “directives” to its pool of volunteer writers across the UK, who respond by describing their daily lives, opinions and feelings. Most who replied to the directive on friendship were women over 60. As the hours passed, my fingers grew numb but I didn’t care. It was so absorbing to read their intimate accounts of the pleasures and the usually unspoken difficulties of friendship.
