'I felt like I was getting somewhere that evening. Sitting by the window sipping my tea and eating lovely iced buns, I'd come such a long way from Hoxton . . .''A wonderful trip down memory lane. I found the odd tear roll down my cheek . . . and there are moments of laughter throughout the book too, smiles and sighs, and even the odd grunt of disgust!' - READER REVIEW ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Born in 1910, Rose Plummer grew up in an East End slum, whe...

The must-read memoir from Nancy Jackman, a cook in interwar England. Perfect for fans of Downton Abbey and Upstairs, DownstairsAn inspirational true story loved by readers:'To read Nancy's story in her own words was an absolute joy. The history, the humour, a perfect read of times gone by.' - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ READER REVIEW'Touching, funny, nostalgic. This book opens a door into a world long ago and is a gem p...

Bernadette was just ten years old when her father packed her off to a convent school in Dublin. Seven gruelling years later, she returned home to Liverpool at the start of the swinging sixties. Bernadette had dreamed of being a teacher ever since she was a little girl so she promptly began a course at teacher training college, determined to give children the sort of education she wished she'd had. Bernadette got her first job at 21, teaching five to seven year olds in a school in one of Li...

After her years in domestic service, Winifred Foley married and started a family. But, while scraping a living as a charwoman in a rundown north London tenement, she continued to long for her home in the Forest of Dean and the cherished relatives she had left behind. Determined to give their children the rural upbringing she had enjoyed, the young couple moved to an isolated, crumbling cottage not far from the Forest. But even in the 1950s they lacked heating or running water, and money wa...

Polly Perkins can hardly believe her luck when she is taken on as under-housemaid at Swallowcliffe Hall. At first it's all she can do to keep up, with endless fires to be laid and beds to be made, never mind when guests arrive from London for a country house party. Will she ever feel at home in this grand old house, full of whispers and ghosts from the past? But friendship and comfort are found in unexpected places and Polly slowly becomes used to her new life - until the discovery of a tr...

In the bestselling tradition of Call the Midwife, an honest and moving account of working as a district nurse in 1950s England.Born in Belfast, Patricia Jordan left for England to train as a nurse in the 1940s and DISTRICT NURSE is her moving and humorous account of life as a visiting nurse in a small English town. She leaves behind a close-knit family and a failed romance in Ireland to begin training in Barnet and Middlesex. She early on treats a patient ...

From the grand houses of Brighton to imposing London mansions, life as a kitchen maid could be exhausting and demoralising. It’s not just being at the beck and call of the people upstairs, when even the children of the family can treat you like dirt, but having to deal with temperamental cooks, starchy butlers and chauffeurs with a roving eye. Marriage is the only escape, but with one evening off a week Margaret has no time to lose. Between Perce the bus conductor (who brings his mother on...

Winifred Foley grew up in the 1920s, a bright, determined miner's daughter - in a world of unspoilt beauty and desperate hardship, in which women were widowed at thirty and children died of starvation. Living hand-to-mouth in a tumbledown cottage in the Forest of Dean, Foley - 'our Poll' - had a loving family and the woods and streams of a forest 'better than heaven' as a playground. But a brother and sister were dead in infancy, bread had to be begged from kindly neighbours and she never ...

As a Victorian lady, what unspoken rules governed what you wore, how you spoke, and how you filled your time? This fascinating book takes you back in time to show you just how your day would be, and how it differed from lower class life.

I was born in a tenement flat in the East End of London in the year in which Queen Victoria died.'FOUR MEALS FOR FOURPENCE is Grace Foakes's memories of her girlhood in Wapping in the early 1900s. With a child's uncluttered eye, she describes the small details - shopping in the market, men waiting for work at the dock gates, the rituals of washday, the sights, sounds and smells of the old East End of London. She also describes the fear - of illness, of unemployment, of the workhous...

What was it like to live in a Victorian Household? What time did the servants have to get up? What was the food like and who cooked it? How did the clothing differ for the different types of servants? How much did the servants get paid? This book shows you what it was really like to live in Victorian times, for those both above and below stairs.

The Breadmaker's Saga follows the story of a Glasgow working class community living through the dark days of the Depression and the Second World War.Clydend, McNair's Bakery and the surrounding tenements, are all vividly and absorbingly depicted, as are the lives and loves of people like Catriona, a young woman trying to cope with an overbearing husband; the foreman baker Baldy Fowler and his tragic wife, Sarah; Alec Jackson, the philandering insurance sal...