This is not a tale of gloom, it is one of tenacity and endurance told with courage and a wry sense of humour. It is also a story about love. In this moving and honest autobiography Ethel Dallin describes her childhood with her brother and their widowed, frequently drunk mother in a grim tenement block in London. But the impoverished home life was brightened by the lively and exciting background of London life between the wars. Reaching adulthood brought Ethel new dilemmas in life - mainly of love and the opposite sex in days when "nice girls didn't". During the Second World War Ethel was badly injured by bomb shrapnel and the trauma of that injury cast a long shadow over her life.