Bringing the Rowntree Leisure Interviews to Life

Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree and English Life and Leisure

Welcome to our new digital project exploring the fascinating history behind Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree’s investigation into the lives of ‘ordinary’ people in England after the Second World War.

Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree – known as ‘Seebohm’ – was a member of the famous Rowntree chocolate family and an influential figure in the development of sociology, the study of social life.

In the late 1940s, as Britain emerged from the Second World War and focused on rebuilding, Seebohm planned for a new research study that would explore “the cultural and spiritual life of the nation.” The project was part of broader interest during this time in the lives of ‘ordinary’ people. Seebohm worked with a team of researchers who interviewed people from a range of backgrounds and life circumstances across the country. The interviews were published in 1951 in the book English Life and Leisure.

The study aimed to “let a substantial number of men and women, of all ages and social classes, speak for themselves”. However, Rowntree and his co-author G.R. Lavers brought their own interests and motivations to the project. As a result, English Life and Leisure was far from an objective study. Academic reception of the book highlighted the limitations of its methodologies and criticised its judgemental tendencies, although the public loved being able to peek into one another’s lives, with extracts printed in the tabloid press.

This short introductory film uses evocative clips from the Yorkshire Film Archive to explore the background to English Life and Leisure:

The Historical Context of English Life and Leisure

English Life and Leisure captures a distinctive moment in the country’s past. The book – which is available to read for free on the Internet Archive – is a rich document for understanding the social history of mid twentieth-century Britain.

There were unprecedented changes in the years following the end of the Second World War. A new Labour government, led by Clement Atlee, represented hope. Employment rates were high, and the government invested significantly in public services and the welfare state, including the creation of the National Health Service (NHS).

However, the country also faced major financial and social difficulties. Economic recovery was slow. Rationing continued, and there was a major housing shortage. The nation struggled to process the large-scale grief and trauma of the war. Women had played an active part in the war effort, but were expected to return to the home to resume their traditional unpaid roles as wives and mothers. Internationally, Britain saw its colonial power waning.

English Life and Leisure therefore captured people’s changing relationships to work and leisure as social expectations and experiences were shifting in multiple ways.

Today, the original documents from the study are held at the Borthwick Institute for Archives in York, where they are freely accessible to members of the public.