Lockdown Life

A book entitled Lockdown Life: The Pandemic Experience for Older Diarists will be published by Policy Press on 20 March 2025, to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the first lockdown in Britain. 

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The Covid-19 pandemic, which reached Britain in early 2020, was an event like no other. It arrived with little warning, led to unprecedented restrictions and control within the general population, and transformed everyday lives. The times were imbued with risk and uncertainty. 

 

This book draws on the diary entries of 68 relatively advantaged older men and women, mainly resident in England but also living in Scotland and Wales, written at the time. It describes their experiences and reactions over the next year or so as they abandoned many taken-for-granted behaviours and activities and adopted new ways of being. Their personal accounts are examined within a, mainly, symbolic interactionist framework, but also set within the political and legalistic context as well as alongside contemporary research and comment.  

 

The book is available from Amazon, Waterstones and other bookshops. If you would like to go on my mailing list for a likely discount code, please send me a message on the Contact page.