Martha Jane and Me: A Girlhood in Wales - Softcover

Nicholson, Mavis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0552995096 ISBN 13: 9780552995092

Publisher: Corgi, 1992

Synopsis

Written with understanding and compassion, Martha Jane & Me is Mavis Nicholson's story of her relationship with her grandmother, a possessive, jealous woman, who was the dominant influence in Mavis's young life.

About this title

Review:

Mavis Nicholson was born into an extraordinarily ordinary family in South Wales and grew up in the world of the working classes as they lived through two world wars and changing fortunes both globally and close to home. In this rather lovely autobiography Nicholson speaks fondly and pragmatically of her nearest and dearest, recalling with all the clarity and simplicity of a child the neighbourhood of her youth, gradually peeling away the layers of her memory as she tells the story of the little girl who grew up to be one of the Britain's most compassionate and well-respected broadcasters.

Fond memories of the terraced home she shared with her parents and grandparents and her younger twin siblings are deliciously intertwined with recollections of a burgeoning spirit of adventure fuelled by New Best Friends, bus rides to Woolworths and regular trips to the cinema, interlaced with a psychological insight that belies the tender age of the young Mavis as she wends her way through childhood. Martha Jane and Me is a gracious, likable memoir in which Nicholson's unquestioning acceptance of and fondness for the characters and events that shaped her young life shine brightly, and is filled with the kind of captivating detail that instantly transports the reader to the very heart of a small town in South Wales where the going was sometimes tough, but the tough just got on with it. --Susan Harrison

Synopsis:

Today, television interviewer Mavis Nicholson regularly rubs shoulders with the famous. As a girl in the 30s and 40s 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Corgi
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0552995096
• ISBN 13: 9780552995092
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288