Martha Jane and Me: A Girlhood in Wales

by Mavis Nicholson (Author)

• Used

  Illustrated
  1991

  $3.25

  Today, television interviewer Mavis Nicholson regularly rubs shoulders with the famous. As a girl in the 1930s and 1940s she dreaded her friends finding out how closely she rubbed shoulders with her grandmother, whose large feather bed she shared until she left home. Mavis' different childhood memoirs conjure up her vanished world at 5 Mansel Street, Briton Ferry, South Wales, the small terraced house crammed with grandparents, parents, brother and sister. She describes the daily round, the weekly highlight of the Kinema, Jerusalem Chapel, the boys and the gradual awakening to life beyond the Ferry. And, above all, the bittersweet memories of the possessive, baleful, increasingly bitter Martha Jane, her grandmother and the dominant figure in Mavis' young life.

• Used

  Paperback
  1996

  $3.40

  A collection of women, some famous, some unknown, talk to Mavis Nicholson about how they lived, worked, and loved during the war years and how their lives were changed by their experiences. The book includes conversations with actress Molly Weir, writer Mary Wesley and singer Anne Shelton.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1995

  $3.25

  A collection of women, some famous, some completely unknown, from different walks of life, talk to Mavis Nicholson about how they lived, worked, loved, managed during the war years and how their lives were changed by their experiences. They were factory workers, entertainers, landgirls, mothers of evacuees, socialites, code breakers, black-marketeers, women who served in the forces. Their stories uncover the vivid detail of women's lives, the make-do and mend, the new freedom that war gave them, but also the euphoria and depression which followed, the post-war adjustments that had to be made. The book includes interviews with actress Molly Weir, writer, Mary Wesley, ballerina Alicia Markova, secret agent Odette , Pauline Crabbe (Council for the Unmarried Mother), singer Anne Shelton's last interview and many others.