Born the daughter of a coal miner in 1914, Winifred Foley was raised in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. Blessed with a vivid memory and a natural ear for dialogue, the author re-creates the life of her warm-hearted, loving family, poor in worldly goods but rich in spirit. She recalls the small details of observation and experience so effectively that her childhood world lives again - sturdy, unsentimental, full of the good humour that was the cottagers' natural response to their hard lot.
At the age of 14 Winifred had to leaver her rural home to find work as a domestic servant in London and in the Cotswolds. She recounts her misadventures- and ineptitude - in the role of housemaid with the same cheerful spirit and sense of the comic. Having come to terms with the greater world and her need to live away from the Forest, she meets and falls in love with the young man who becomes her husband.
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