Until she was seven years old, Anna Rosenburg was happy. She lived a simple life in a two-room flat with her devoted father. In Anna's world, there was very little to worry about - until a wealthy, highminded 'pillar of society' across the road decided that it really wasn't right for a little girl to be brought up by a poor father on his own. Telling Anna that they were going for a drive in the country, she took her away to live in a children's home. The devastation of this betrayal and the loss of regular contact with her father destroyed Anna's young world. Her unhappiness was compounded by...

Insurance underwriter Ken Hinde is driving home from Kempton Racecourse when his car inexplicably goes out of control and crashes. The doctors are unable to save him, and he dies a few hours later in hospital. The verdict - accidental death. But Valerie Elphick, Ken's personal assistant and close friend, refuses to accept the verdict. She makes some enquiries of her own - and soon attracts the attention of the wrong sort of people, people who will stop at nothing to hide the truth about what really happened to two valuable racehorses, and why Ken had to die. Author Iris Penn is a lifelong...

When Ingrid Steel was first put into an orphanage at the age of four, she did not even know her real name. Nor would anyone tell her who her parents were, or what had happened to them. After years of bullying, deprivation and gratuitous punishment - even sexual abuse - in a series of homes and orphanages, she was incarcerated first in a borstal, then in a mental hospital. One day after returning to the orphanage, Ingrid made a secret pilgrimage to Somerset House in London to discover her real identity. She came back in triumph clutching her precious birth certificate - only to have it taken...

When Terence Kearey married for the first time in 1957 Britain was still recovering from the war years, and had further to go than anyone suspected. In the author's case, the economic pressures were exacerbated by a family which was expanding much faster than he had intended or could afford. The result was an economic and emotional downward spiral which ultimately led to the greatest crisis of his life. Finding himself fighting an emotional battle at home and an industrial one at work as he was caught up in the greed, selfishness and restrictive practices of post-war industry, he came near to...

William Rigg was born into a humble Cumbrian family in 1911, eventually becoming one of 13 children. His mother died when he was three and by the age of five he was having to put up with a stepmother's bullying. Often sleeping three in a bed and sharing shoes with his siblings because there weren't enough pairs to go round, he scarcely knew what it was to eat a decent meal. He would scrounge leftovers, steal turnips and potatoes to supplement the family menu and eat hawthorn and nettle leaves from the hedgerows. A bright child, he had to pass up the chance to go to grammar school because...

This is a story about the passage of time, from a Norman invasion to a narrowly-avoided German one. It tells of the joys and hardships of life in rural southern England through the seasons and through the centuries. It relates how a family coped with poverty and penury, and how one day in the 1930s a daughter went off to work in a mill. In due course this particular young woman went on to become a lady's maid and eventually a London suburban housewife - and the author's mother. The tale is set in and around the town of Chard in the English West Country, although many of the events described...

This is the story of life in an English town and an English community as seen through the eyes of an ordinary English family - the author's own. It focuses on the years from the 1930s through to the 1960s and covers a period when the country was changing perhaps faster that it ever has before or since. From a familiar world in which life was simple and expectations modest, values were upheld and the community spirit prevailed, Britain was plunged into the chaos of war at a time when most people could all too clearly recall the horror of the preceding one. Never have the British people pulled...

What happened at 10 Rilllington Place was so shocking and gruesome that even today everyone over a certain age still remembers the case with a shudder. In 1950, Timothy Evans was hanged for the violent murder of his baby daughter; he was also assumed to have murdered his wife. Then, less than three years later, another tenant, John Christie, was found to have killed at least six women, hiding their bodies in the garden, under floorboards and in a concealed kitchen alcove. Christie followed Evans to the gallows. It seemed unlikely that two murderers were living at 10 Rillington Place, and the...

Against the backdrop of the often turbulent events of the 20th century, this book sets David and Glady Wilkie's personal story in the context of the changing lifestyles of the middle and later decades until their deaths in 1985 and 1986 respectively.

For more than two years, Rose Elders and her daughter Elizabeth were hounded, bullied and intimidated almost to the point of madness, all because certain junior public servants misused their power, while senior ones who could have stopped it failed to use theirs as they should have. It all started when Elizabeth found she was being stalked by a well-known local misfit who was clearly trying to gain power over the women in order to get his hands on their money. He made a trumped-up claim to the local Social Services mental health team that Elizabeth was abusing her mother, and when Elizabeth...