Born on a Somerset pea-field in 1941, the second of eight children in a Romani family, Maggie Smith-Bendell has lived through the years of greatest change in the travelling community's long history. As a child, Maggie rode and slept in a horse-drawn wagon, picked hops and flowers, and sat beside her father's campfire on ancient verges, poor but free to roam. As the twentieth century progressed, common land was fenced off and the traditional ways disappeared.
Eventually Maggie married a house-dweller and tried to settle for bricks and mortar, but she never lost the restless spirit, the deep love of the land and the gift for storytelling that were her Romani inheritance.
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"Another growing-up memoir from a traveller who is now an avid campaigner for travellers' rights which brings this book right up-to-date with the problems and prejudices they still suffer and the idiosyncrasies of modern planning permission." — Sephie (4 out of 5 stars)
"Another growing-up memoir from a traveller who is now an avid campaigner for travellers' rights which brings this book right up-to-date with the problems and prejudices they still suffer and the idiosyncrasies of modern planning permission."
" Good storytelling, and an informative insight into the Romany life then and now. "
" A nice book and worth a read. Nice to learn a bit about the travellers way of life. "
" I really enjoyed this one. It felt like a step back in time. "
" I really enjoyed it. It gave a real insight into the Romani life and how awful they were treated by communties and the police, mainly due to ignorance.Their life was hard and their families very tight knit. "
" This is a really interesting memoir about a gypsy family in 1950s England. It was quite upsetting in places as it tells of the hardships faced by the family and the ways they were discriminated against too. "
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