Thirty Years of John G. Brown’s Life, 1918-1948 Diaries, York, England

These thirty, daily diaries cover thirty years of Brown's life. Of all those years, he rarely missed an entry after he finished school. He lived a quiet, bookish life, never marrying, never having children. He did not fight in either world war, shockingly for an Englishman, although he did participate in the Civil Defense during WWII. He also grew a LOT of vegetables during that war and was quite the gardener besides. Many of the entries are about gardening on a large scale. In a quick skim of 1918, the only mention of WWI was on Armistice Day. That year he instead wrote about men's sewing circle, choir, gardening, and teaching. A glance at 1922 was more of the same and also yielded several mentions of printing his own photographs as well as doing legal work for his father. 1924 was more of the same and and that he "pottered about" a lot. He was a lover of cinema and saw many movies in the 20s. In Dec. 1924, he saw "The Covered Wagon," which he proclaimed, "Jolly Good."

Throughout WWII, he saw a slew of movies, sometimes 3-4 nights a week, all listed by name, along with the cartoons and which newsreels he saw. I looked up many important dates of WWII and he made note of all of them, but most just to mention them. The only one with any lengthy entry was the bombing of York on the night of April 29th, 1942. He describes bicycling around the city looking at the terrible damage the next day and that he taken refuge in a shelter overnight.

The diaries are generally in very good condition but some of the spines have wear/missing paper as some of the books are bound in paper. The leather ones are in better repair. The pages appear to be all intact. Note that his writing is miniscule. I found his handwriting easy to read, but you might need a magnifying glass.