Pauline Forrest’s account of a working-class childhood in Bath in the 1920s and 1930s is a vivid evocation of a city changed almost beyond recognition – a city of tramcars, lodging houses, street vendors, midwinter dips in the flooded river and charabanc trips to the seaside. It was a time of ‘making do’, of getting by as best you could, when small pleasures counted for a lot. But, although firmly rooted in a particular time and place, her account reminds us, above all, of what it is to be a child, with all the hopes and dreams, all the adventures and tribulations (and occasional naughtiness) that entails. By turns funny, uplifting and sad, it is a classic account of childhood between the wars.
“Reliving her schooldays, with all their joys and tribulations, the book gives a very real sense of what the city was like for ordinary people in the 1920s and 1930s. Pauline’s story takes us up to the outbreak of WWII, when she was working in Todd’s West of England Tailoring Factory, and taking part in the work of the Red Cross.”
Best of British Magazine“Anyone who has wondered what it was like to live in the centre of Bath between the world wars and after the grand houses had been abandoned by the well-to-do should read this book. Pauline was born in Kingsmead Street in the heart of the city in November 1921. She started life, as she says, when the houses no longer belonged to the wealthy but were occupied by working-class families like her own. But although the buildings looked pretty gloomy by today’s standards, Pauline’s account is anything but. With what is obviously a sunny personality she paints a vividly colourful picture of life, first on Kingsmead Square and then a move to Avon Street to open a cafe long before anyone had even dreamed of creating a cafe society in Bath … But one day Pauline returned home to find an ambulance outside the cafe and her mother being taken on a stretcher to hospital. It led to the family giving up the business and moving nearby to a house that cost 15 shillings a week, but then the family took over the tenancy of 7 Primrose Hill at Weston. There then follows an account of a more rural existence for the Quintin family in the wilds of Weston. As well as a chatty description of life in Bath, Pauline’s book is packed with many seldom-seen photographs of the city centre and the people living in it.”
Bath Chronicle