Growing up dirt poor and Cockney in the East End of London at the turn of the century, her mother died when she was eight, leaving Muriel with her Methodist minister father. My minister great-grandfather remarried a wicked witch who thought my nana was sinful because of her curly red hair. My nana’s beautiful shock of rocking red hair! Being forced to brush it with lye, to rid the sinful curls from their doubly sinful redness was painful, humiliating, and abusive.
