‘Lockdown 2020: the first 100 days’ is the first book to be produced by the Friends of Nottinghamshire Archives (FONA).  Beautifully illustrated, it comprises extracts from diaries written by 13 Nottinghamshire residents, capturing ordinary life during the first Lockdown.

2020 will be remembered as a time when society changed. Institutional records and the news media will document the major social and economic consequences of Coronavirus, but the everyday consequences for people, as they learn to adapt to the effect of COVID 19, will be less well recorded.

This book aims, in a small way, to plug that gap. It brings together the experiences of a group of Nottinghamshire people as they begin to adapt to the restrictions imposed on them from 23 March 2020. It reveals the spirit with which they met the new challenges and their determination to make the best of this new way of living.

It highlights both the sadness of not being able to meet – and touch – friends and family and a growing appreciation of the environment and nature, often bringing into focus small things, previously taken for granted. It gives them a voice which perhaps otherwise would not have been heard.

The book costs £4.50 plus postage. For details of how to buy your copy, please email chair@fona.org.uk