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When Shelagh Bell was sorting through her mother's possessions after she had moved into a nursing home, she came across a pile of typescript, clumsily typed on one finger, many of the pages screwed up or out of order. She had found her mother’s memoirs, covering the years from her birth in 1900 to the death of the husband she worshipped, Shelagh’s father, in 1970.

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Shelagh devoted all her spare time to sorting them out and typing them up properly, and the result is this book; a beautifully-written, moving and often very funny story of a family who lived through two world wars and were constantly on the move, thanks to his career as a sea captain and her passion for house-hunting.

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Biography of Kathleen Locke

Born 1900 to a Southampton solicitor's family, she was educated mainly at home by governesses until her teens, apart from some months spent in 1913 Germany. Married to a Cunard captain, the advent of WW2 opened out her existence from mundane family life to wartime visits to the States, Canada, the news of a U-boat attack on her husband's ship, a stay in Scotland and later, a sojourn in Egypt.

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Her accounts, back in post-war England, tell of a restless, gifted, but somewhat dysfunctional figure, finding it hard to settle in one place for long and the sad death of her husband. Her story spans most of the 20th century.

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Contact us to obtain a copy of the book for review by clicking here.

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