Lost Voices: Memories of a Vanished Way of Life - Softcover

"Funny, nostalgic and ironic" (Daily Express)

"A vivid, honest and enchanting evocation" (Daily Mail)

"A charmer" (Evening Standard)

"The stories are atmospheric, but it is O'Neill's open-minded examination of her own position in relation to the women, the history and the writing that makes this book a work of art" (What's On In London)

"Gilda O'Neill has brought to life a time when women relished simple pleasures and the close friendships formed while working alongside one another each summer" (Sunday Express)

In the 1940s, nearly a quarter of a million East Londoners decamped annually for the hopfields of Kent. Most of the pickers were women, who would take their children and other dependent relatives to stay in the hoppers' huts on the farms.

This book records the memories of some of them, in their own lively words. Funny, nostalgic and ironic by turns, they tell of hopping as 'a break from him', an escape from the chesty London smog, respite from the bombs of war, as well as a source of income - and the nearest thing to a holiday that adults or children were likely to get. It was a time of hard graft, of laughter and companionship and long evenings around the faggot fire. In the memories of those who were there, it was a time when the sun always shone ...

Gilda O'Neill was herself a hop picker as a girl. In this vivid book she not only pays tribute to the creative genius of the working class of London's East End, but examines the role of memory and oral history in our understanding of the past.