JOBS FOR THE GIRLS

' I actually do not know of any writer alive in the English language, in verse or prose, who is cleverer, more observant or who has told us more about ourselves.' - A. N. Wilson. Ysenda Maxtone Graham, author of The Real Mrs Miniver, has mined the memories of more than 200 women for their personal job stories. She excels in the quirky, comic and even poignant details that resonate with our readers who are nostalgic for a dear British past. In this way she is a sort of George Orwell, but better. Drawn from real life, interviews with women from all sections of society who ever had a job, this book is an eye-opening portrait of British women from 1950, through cardigans and pearls via miniskirts and bottom pinching, to shoulder pads and the ping of the first emails in the early 1990s, never forgetting overalls, aprons and uniforms. And all this after what was a shockingly unambitious school education - girls with or without Maths O-Level, secretarial and 'little jobs', sewing and the inspiration of Anna the Air Hostess. Here is life as a secretary, living in digs, smoking, drinking and lunch, perks, machinery, lust and love in the work place and being an extension of one's husband. Here are the jollities and drudgeries, good men and vile ones, nasty women and heroines, office crushes, parties and great piles of paper all over the place, the forging of life long friendships, the daily burden of trying to run a household and family as well - in short, a look at all facets of this rich slice of British life. Ysenda has a high sense of comedy and her book is full of great anecdotes, expertly woven together, some from quite upper middle class backgrounds like the wonderful Rosie de Courcy in the late 1970s as Editor at Sphere Books. 'Men threw things. George Weidenfeld threw an inkwell at Mary Burd when she was his secretary in the 1960s...The boss-secretary relationship was one that facilitated tyranny.' "There was the long standing secretary in loose cardigan and the young, sexy one in tight cardigan whom he could have sexual fantasies about." Nostalgia galore. 303pp, photos.