Under the Rainbow: Voices from Lockdown

Public symbolism meets private reflection: writer and urban explorer James Attlee reads the signs that appeared in windows and hears from artists, activists, frontline workers and more.

As the country entered lockdown in the spring of 2020, images and signs proliferated in windows, symptoms of the human desire to communicate as face-to-face contact became impossible. When restrictions temporarily eased, writer James Attlee began ringing doorbells in his hometown of Oxford. On doorsteps and park benches, on council estates and among genteel terraces, he recorded the voices of those briefly emerging from isolation.

He won the trust of rainbow painters and anti-vaxxers, a Covid nurse, an LGBTQ+ artist, a VE Day celebrator and Black Lives Matter protesters, as well as frontline workers in a bakery and a supermarket. Their words, Attlee’s pithy observations and 16 pages of his photographs make Under the Rainbow a unique record of an extraordinary year and a tribute to creativity and resilience.