Full Hearts And Empty Bellies
A 1920s Childhood from the Forest of Dean to the Streets of London

This is the autobiography of Winifred Foley, describing her childhood in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, and teenage years spent as a maidservant in London. I found it a passable enough bedtime read. I don't think Foley is natural writer, but it had for me the attractions almost of an oral hi......more

Back before the misery memoir was all the rage, there was the nostalgic childhood book - this one, Larkrise to Candleford, Cider with Rosie, and no doubt others. They capture rural childhoods before cars were common place, when children still went barefoot and the world was a different place. Povert......more

Biography of Winifred Foley who was born at the turn of the 20th century to a pit family in the Forest of Dean, this was both funny and poignant. I had no idea that someone could be born into such appalling poverty but she was cheery, foisty and enterprising. The first half tells of her childhood, t......more

This is the kind of hilarious book you can come back to repeatedly. At the turn of the 19th century, Winifred Foley grew up impoverished in the Forest of Dean where her father was a miner. At 14, Winifred, like all children in her village, was shipped off to work, in Winifred's case as a domestic. Sh......more

I thought this memoir was just wonderful......and it had a lovely humour all the way through it. A way of life that is long gone but the grinding poverty must have been an awful way to live.....never knowing if your children were going to eat. All in all though it was a treasure to read.......more