Living History

The stock market crash is in every news bulletin here, as I'm sure it is all over the world. This evening, the TV news is reporting an unprecedented demand for charity services, and has shown scenes of massive crowds queuing for food hand-outs. There have always been such food hand-outs and the newsfolk may only be making a big deal out of them because everyone is running scared at the moment, but on the balance of evidence it looks like there really has been a massive surge in people desperately needing support just to survive.

I can't help wondering what it felt like back in 1929, when the world was still reeling and confused and not quite sure where it was going to go. The histories we are taught are coloured with the benefit of hindsight - we read them already knowing how the story ended. It's very hard to get inside the minds of the people who lived through it, to watch through their eyes as they saw the bouncing pebbles become an avalanche.

What was that like?

Was it like this?