Our Street: East End Life in the Second World War - Hardcover

O'Neill, Gilda

3.99

213 ratings by Goodreads

9780670896905: Our Street: East End Life in the Second World War

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067089690X ISBN 13: 9780670896905

Publisher: Viking, 2003

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Can Gilda tell us yet more about the East End? Yes she can!
OUR STREET focuses on the oral testimony of East Londoners as it tells their funny, sad, hopeful, and sometimes shocking stories of what it was like to live in the East End during the Blitz. Our Street - a place both physical and metaphorical - describes the security and the claustrophobia of living in a tight knit community of working people made up of extended family networks, life-long friends, and neighbours who knew you by name.This is an affectionate record of an often fondly remembered, more communal, way of life that has for too many people in our increasingly isolated, change-obsessed twenty first century, all but disappeared.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

At first sight of Our Street, the old publishing maxim 'if they like it once they'll love it twice' comes to mind as it might initially seem little different from My East End, Gilda O'Neill's bestselling social history of the area in which she grew up which achieved a 24,500 hardback and 110,000 paperback sale. However, this affectionate, nostalgic record of East End life during World War II is a very different book which focuses on veteran Cockneys who tell their sometimes funny, sometimes hopeful and often shocking stories of what it was really like living through the Blitz. Through these oral testimonies O'Neill paints a picture of a tightly knit community of extended families, life-long friends and close neighbours that sadly no longer exists in our big cities.

About the Author:

Gilda O'Neill grew up in the East End of London. Having left school aged fifteen, she later returned to education as a mature student and went on to take three university degrees. Since 1990 she has been writing full-time and has published seven novels and two non-fiction works as well as many short stories, articles and reviews. She is a founder member of Material Girls, a network of women writers across the whole spectrum of the industry. She lives in Shoreditch.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.