Jennifer J. Purcell is Professor of History at Saint Michael’s 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) and editor of Mass Observation: Text, Context and Analysis of the Pioneering Pamphlet and Movement (Bloomsbury, 2023) and Reflections on British Royalty: Mass Observation and the Monarchy, 1937-2022 (with Fiona Courage; Bloomsbury, 2024). Lucy D. Curzon is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Alabama, USA. She is the author of Visual Culture and Mass Observation: Depicting Everyday Lives (2017), which was awarded the Historians of British Art Book Prize for a single-authored book with a subject after 1800. With Ben Jones, she co-edited The Historical Contexts and Contemporary Uses of Mass Observation: 1930s to the Present (2025). She has previously published work on contemporary queer portrait painting and photography, British women war artists, the Ashington Group and Humphrey Spender.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).

Bringing together a varied and vibrant collection of essays, this book is a fascinating and extremely timely account of how British people relate to royalty in the twenty-first century. While Mass Observers have been documenting their feelings about monarchy for as long as Mass Observation has existed, this book neatly updates this history with the most recent observations of the coronation of Charles III. Both well-researched and interspersed with personal anecdotes, the book accounts for the place of the British monarchy in people’s lives today.

• List of figuresAcknowledgementsNotes on ContributorsIntroduction: May the 6th: Mass Observing the Coronation of Charles III, Jennifer J. Purcell and Lucy D. Curzon with Dorothy SheridanPart IOBSERVATIONS I1 Tales we tell ourselves: The Endurance of British Monarchy in the Twenty-First Century, Jennifer J. PurcellPart IIOBSERVATIONS II2 Visualizing Coronation, Lucy D. Curzon and Jennifer J. PurcellPart IIIOBSERVATIONS III3 ‘Timid, Bookish, and Unproductive’?: Mass Observation, Monarchy And Academia, Lucy D. CurzonPart IV4 Majesty, Magic and Mass-Observation, Martin Francis5 Charles III’s Royal Body: Some Reflections, Paul R. Deslandes6 Observing the Coronation from Wales, Nick Hubble 7 Another Coronation, Janet Wolff8 Rain, Revels and Rebellion: The People’s Coronation 1937 and 2023, Claire Langhamer and Lucy Noakes9 Royal Families, Lucy D. Curzon10 Carlos III E Camila: Notes from a very small Island, Catherine Ellis11 Rumour and the Coronation Ritual, Kimberly Mair12 ‘Coronation Orgies’ and a ‘Terribly White Balcony’: Emotion and Race in the Coronation of King Charles III, Khaleda Brophy-Harmer13 ‘Lighting up the Nation’?: Sounding Multicultural Britain and the Commonwealth at the Coronation Concert, Trevor R. Nelson and Christina BaadeOBSERVATIONS IVAppendix: Spring 2023 MO DirectiveNotesSelected Bibliography Index