I’m excited to relate that my book Margaret’s Story is now available as a paperback or Kindle version on the Amazon web site. Mum always talked about writing her story but could never get beyond the first chapter about the circumstances of her birth. Born in 1930s Brighton to an unmarried domestic servant she suffered at the hands of cruel foster parents and an unsympathetic grandmother.

Her education interrupted by World War Two; air raids and knitting socks for sailors, she left school at fourteen and entered domestic service herself. She married young, just seventeen, and embarked on the life of an army wife, following my Dad, Will to postings in different parts of the UK, to Trieste, Northern Italy, from where she was evacuated to Germany twice and to newly independent Cyprus.

A loving mother to four children, she cared for everyone except herself. Haunted by her beginnings she neglected her health, put on weight and became increasingly unwell. She remained cheerful through life’s crisis and looked after my Dad when he too became unwell. She was a friend to many and the cornerstone of our family. She never got round to writing the book but here, at last, is Margaret’s Story.

Part One – Birth

Brighton, Sussex, 1930

This is the story of Margaret who
You’ll get to know before we’re through.
Poor Margaret never knew her dad.
Which made her childhood hard and sad.

Back then they used to blame the kid
For what it was their parents did.
Sad to tell poor Margaret’s mother
Fell for a man who’d wed another.

He took advantage then forsook;
Margaret’s mother; family cook.
Domestic servant; left with child,
Abandoned woman, blamed, reviled.

She couldn’t keep both baby and job
Was left to weep, to cry, to sob.
The child was fostered, given away,
Her mother given little say.

The child was my mother, I’m her son.

To know what’s next you must read on.