Full Hearts And Empty Bellies
Author | : Winifred Foley |
Publisher | : Abacus |
Total Pages | : 196 |
Release | : 2009-04-02 |
ISBN-10 | : 9780748111411 |
ISBN-13 | : 0748111417 |
Rating | : 4/5 (11 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: 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 had a new pair of shoes or a shop-bought doll. And most terrible of all, like her sister before her, at fourteen little Poll had to leave her beloved forest for the city, bound for a life in service among London's grey terraces.