The BBC online oral-history archive is invaluable for insights into people’s varied wartime experiences. I was able to supplement these, with reference to Bomber Command, with help from the Imperial War Museum’s DVD, Journey Together, and Max Hastings’s Bomber Command. There were also various websites containing details about escape routes out of occupied Europe during and the Second World War, in particular www.ww2escapelines.co.uk/escapelines/comete. I was also able to build up a fuller picture by reading Kenneth Skidmore’s Follow the Man with the Pitcher and Herman Bodson’s Downed Allied Airmen and Evasion of Capture: The Role of Local Resistance Networks in World War II.
My Daughter, My Mother
BY ANNIE MURRAY
Two daughters. Two mothers.
The secrets of two lifetimes.
In 1984 two young mothers meet at a toddler group in Birmingham. As their friendship grows, they share with each other the difficulties and secrets in their lives.
Joanne, a sweet, shy girl, is increasingly afraid of her husband. The lively, promising man she married has become hostile and violent and she is too ashamed to tell anyone. When her mother, Margaret, is suddenly rushed into hospital, the bewildered family find that there are things about their mother of which they had no idea. Margaret was evacuated from Birmingham as a child and has spent years avoiding the pain of her childhood – but finds that you can’t run from the past forever.
Sooky, kind and good-natured, has already been through one disastrous marriage and is back at home living with her parents. But being ‘disgraced’ is not easy. Her mother, Meena, refuses to speak to Sooky. At first her silence seems like a punishment, but Sooky gradually realizes it contains emotions that are far more complicated, and that her mother may need her help. Meena has spent twenty years trying to fit in with life in Birmingham and to deal with the conflicts within her between East and West, old ways and new.
This is the story of two young women discovering the heartbreak of their mothers’ lives, and of how mothers create daughters – and learn from them.
ISBN: 978-0-330-53520-5
The Women of Lilac Street
BY ANNIE MURRAY
Troubles in life.
Strength in friendship.
Birmingham, almost a decade after the end of the Great War, and the women of Lilac Street have had more than their fair share of troubles . . .
Rose Southgate is trapped in a loveless marriage. Shy and isolated, she makes the best of life, until she meets a man who changes everything.
Jen Green is struggling to make ends meet, with a sick husband and five children to support. Aggie, her eldest daughter, is twelve years old and longs for excitement. But prying into the adult world shows her more than she had bargained for.
And Phyllis Taylor is a widow who has managed to put a dark and traumatic past behind her. But the return of her daughter Dolly threatens all that . . .
These women find strength in friendship, as they discover that the best way to solve their problems is to face them together.
ISBN: 978-0-330-53521-2
hidden talent rediscovered
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Meet Me Under the Clock
ANNIE MURRAY was born in Berkshire and read English at St John’s College, Oxford. Her first ‘Birmingham’ novel, Birmingham Rose, hit The Times bestseller list when it was published in 1995. She has subsequently written seventeen other successful novels. Annie Murray has four children and lives in Reading.
PRAISE FOR ANNIE MURRAY
Soldier Girl
‘This heart-warming story is a gripping read, full of drama, love and compassion’ Take a Break
Chocolate Girls
‘This epic saga will have you gripped from start to finish’ Birmingham Evening Mail
Birmingham Rose
‘An exceptional first novel’ Chronicle
‘A meaty family saga with just the right mix of mystery and nostalgia’ Parents’ Magazine
Birmingham Blitz
‘A tale of passion and empathy which will keep you hooked’ Woman’s Own
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Birmingham Rose
Birmingham Friends
Birmingham Blitz
Orphan of Angel Street
Poppy Day
The Narrowboat Girl
Chocolate Girls
Water Gypsies
Miss Purdy’s Class
Family of Women
Where Earth Meets Sky
The Bells of Bournville Green
A Hopscotch Summer
Soldier Girl
All the Days of Our Lives
The Women of Lilac Street
First published in Great Britain 2014 by Macmillan
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ISBN 978-1-4472-0358-2
Copyright © Annie Murray 2014
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