My Mother's Diaries
 

My Mother’s Diaries began with a collection of handwritten diaries kept by my mother, Margaret Kathleen Vining — Peggy to her friends and later BeBe to the family. She began writing them in 1948 while we were living at Hiltonbury Farm in Chandler’s Ford, Hampshire.

She never intended to write history. She simply recorded everyday life: the weather, visitors, children, cattle, farm work, shopping, dances, illnesses, outings and the countless small happenings of family life. But more than seventy years later, those ordinary entries have become an extraordinary record of a changing Britain.

Through this website and podcast I am bringing her words — and the world around them — back to life, one year at a time.