Theotokos Books has published A Bouquet of Memories: Reminiscences of Eighty Years, by Mary Goodhind
A Bouquet of Memories is a heart warming account of Mary Goodhind’s life from her early years in pre-war London—including her vivid recollections of her wartime experiences of being an evacuee—to her family’s move to a new house in Barnehurst to escape the Blitz.
She recounts the wartime privations, including rationing, with good humour, but her strong Catholic faith and close family ties to her parents and brother, Rory, were great sources or strength during the war years and beyond.
German air-raids, both from conventional bombs, and later on with the V-1 and V-2 rockets, required a spirit of fortitude and endurance, and it seems that for the most part, people shrugged their shoulders and got on with life as well as they could.
Her experiences of childhood, school, and her local church, reveal a world which has largely disappeared, a time before television, when there was a much greater sense of community. Similarly, her years at Convent school and her first job in a bank after the War provide fascinating insights into a very different way of life.
A Bouquet of Memories also recounts Mary’s love of horses and the friendships she established both during and after the War, as well as her numerous holidays and pilgrimages.
This book will help the children of today to realise some of the things that their own relatives went through in the turbulent first half of the twentieth century. And while it will be a trip down memory lane for those who have lived through similar experiences, it will be an eye opener for those to whom World War II and its aftermath are mainly part of a fading historical remembrance.
Francis Phillips review of A Bouquet of Memories, by Mary Goodhind
Mary Goodhind has written these “Reminiscences of Eighty Years” so that her grandchildren might learn what it was like to grow up before the War, in a poor, loving and stable home, with a strong Catholic faith – the book describes the author’s enjoyment of pilgrimages to Marian shrines – and surrounded by a general culture of hard work and simple pleasures. These usually centred on social events within the parish or outings with friends. Her story ends with the start of her own happy marriage. It is almost impossible today to imagine the lives of most ordinary people in the 1930s and 1940s: no telephones, central heating, hot water or washing machines. The War itself brought rationing, clothing coupons and air raids. The author’s mother stayed calm during these occasions, telling a friend that “I kneel in a corner and pray.”
Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Bouquet-Memories-Reminiscences-Eighty-Years/dp/0957496907
Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bouquet-Memories-Reminiscences-Eighty-Years/dp/0957496907
A Bouquet of Memories is paperback-softcover, Demy Octavo size (8.5 in. x 5.5 in.), and has 150 pages, ISBN 9780957496903