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...

As soon as they'd saved up for the three 'S's' - shoes, suitcase and a suit - they left rural Ireland. It might have been the London of the 1950s where 'No Blacks, No Irish No Dogs' was the welcome put out for immigrants, but for the big family that was Anna May Mangan's, it was still better than the poverty they'd hailed from; 'Don't waste today worrying because tomorrow will be even worse' was their motto. But Ireland came with them in the dance halls, holy water and gossip and there was...

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...

'A wonderful tale of 1950s Britain... a vivid account of a midwife's lot' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Amazon reader review'I couldn't put it down' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Amazon reader review'Charming, sad, humorous and poignant' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Amazon reader review*****The compelling and heartwarming true story of a young nurse's life and work in 1950s England, from the Sunday Times bestseller.'Three small children pee...

Grace is a kitchenmaid but, unlike her mother, Polly, she doesn't enjoy life inside the house; she'd much rather be working in the stables with the horses. Cricket teas and shooting-party luncheons will soon become a distant memory, however. It's 1914 and war is about to turn the country upside down. Soon all the young male servants are leaving to fight in France, while trainloads of wounded soldiers arrive at the Hall to convalesce. Grace can see at firsthand the terrible effects of war, ...

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...

Arriving at the great houses of 1920s London, fifteen-year-old Margaret’s life in service was about to begin…As a kitchen maid – the lowest of the low – she entered an entirely new world; one of stoves to be blacked, vegetables to be scrubbed, mistresses to be appeased, and even bootlaces to be ironed. Work started at 5.30am and went on until after dark. It was a far cry from her childhood on the beaches of Hove, where money and food were scarce, but warmth and laughter never were....

The reader will be drawn irresistably into the world of the author who presents a catalogue of abuse and cruelty suffered by herself as an innocent child, first at the hands of her alcoholic father, then by nuns, and later by a heartless husband who raped and beat her. This is compulsive reading.The book shows how the shadow of a father's cruelty can be cast over the whole life of a child--a child who, in this instance, never failed to turn the other cheek, or return love for cruel...

A riveting and hugely entertaining memoir of post-war London told through the eyes of a hilariously opportunistic little boy.'This warm and witty autobiography lovingly evokes the community spirit of a Britain emerging from war and will have you hankering after simpler times' CANDISBy the time he was ten years old, Billy Brown was running a successful little business on the black market: whatever you needed, from bricks and firewood to dress material or mac...

World War Two is finally over. Millions all over the country are starting to wonder if peacetime really is much of an improvement on the War. Food shortages, endless queues, power cuts, rationing and freezing winters make it extremely difficult to make ends meet as husbands return from battlefields to families they hardly know. Yet some East Enders are living large...in a bombed out damp and squalid Hackney slum, one family are leading a life of luxury, a loadsamoney world funded by illega...

Each and every single one of the 100 plus children I have cared for over the past 62 years are very much in my heart.'It is 1945, the war is finally over and victory marches fill the streets of London. Brenda and her friends, happy that at long last the war is over, hope that they'll soon leave the days of rationing and worry behind. Before long Brenda's skills as a real life Mary Poppins are in demand again. Moving from house to house, Brenda never stays long, but just enough time...

The memoir of a Great Ormond Street nurse.This is the inspirational story of life as a nurse during the 1960s, 70s and 80s, most of which was spent at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital.Susan Macqueen was 12 years old when she accompanied her mum to see her friend Ms Fairweather, the matron at the local nursing home and from that day on she knew she wanted to be a nurse. A few years later, despite being told that her grades weren't good enough and havi...