Arriving Where I Started

She may not be the Downton Dame, but Maggie Smith is also in her mid-eighties – and a writer whose first three decades encompassed World War II and massive post-war social changes. This is not a misery memoir but a tale of the survival of a bright girl from a family where only a boy would have been worthy of higher education. Written with energy and humour, it was intended originally only for her own family, but readers of all ages have enjoyed the more unusual anecdotes you won’t read in social history book. How many children do you know who were evacuated while sitting on crates of TNT in the back of an ammunition lorry? Did you know that in 1956 women in the Civil Service could on marriage forgo their pension and take instead a dowry of a month’s salary for every year they had worked? Or that Swedish furniture was trendy in the fifties, well before IKEA ? A fascinating read!