Joining the Dots

"From Britain's leading social historian, a lyrical look at the changes to women's lives since 1940, told with examples from her own life. The book provides an intimate, brilliant account of feminism over the last 6 decades. A young woman wearing a navy blue duffle coat and bottle green stockings with an almost matching green hand knitted scarf and bobble hat stood shivering in the vaulted Victorian booking hall of Temple Meads station in Bristol looking uncertainly around her. It was 1 January 1960 and the woman was me. I was sixteen years old, and, using the money I had earned delivering letters for the Post Office during the Christmas Holidays (GBP8.5 shillings) plus a Christmas present of a GBP2 postal order, I had run away from home. In this wonderful book, bestselling social historian Juliet Gardiner explores the radical changes in women's lives since her birth during WW2. It is living history in that it uses episodes from her own life - as a young girl adopted into a lower middle class family, her experience at grammar school, her desperation to escape the suburbs - to illuminate changes in women's lives across society. Short, lyrical, pesonal, this is an accessible and empowering story of education, sexual choice and family planning, professional ambitions and freedom."--Publisher's description.