Reflections on British Royalty: Mass-Observation and the Monarchy, 19372022

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In this original volume, Jennifer J. Purcell and Fiona Courage curate and contextualize Mass-Observations rich archival materials on the British popular imagination of the monarchy and the royal family between 1937 and 2022. A 2016 telephone poll of British adults by Ipsos Mori conducted on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth IIs 90th birthday declared that the monarchy remains as popular as ever. The survey also found that a substantial majority favored a monarchy over a republic. What lies behind the generalisations and statistical data generated by such opinion polls How does the British public imagine the monarchy and its role in British society and governance What is the relationship between the British people and the Crown Using material from the social research organisation, Mass-Observation, which has been asking these questions for over 80 years, Reflections on British Royalty gets to the heart of these issues and more besides. From the coronation of George VI in 1937 to the wake of Elizabeth II's death via war, weddings, a jubilee and a tragedy this book incorporates everything from diaries and detailed responses to questionnaires, to childrens essays on royalty, internal organisational documents and published reports on popular attitudes to royalty in order to reveal the true nature of Britains relationship with its monarchy in the modern era.

Author Bio

Jennifer J. Purcell is Professor of History at Saint Michaels 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). 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).