Showing results by author "Annie Murray" in All Categories

1940: As war closes in and the bombs fall, on the Homefront, two sisters must find their place in a new world of ‘men's' work, in which a telegraph can break your heart and nothing in the future is certain. Growing up in Birmingham, Sylvia and Audrey Whitehouse were always like chalk and cheese. As young women, while Sylvia dreams of her forthcoming life married to fiancé Ian. Audrey can't bear the thought of being tied down by marriage and children.

The Second World War has finally come to a close. Birmingham is welcoming home its menfolk, and a new chapter is beginning in Rachel Booker's life. Her husband has returned, and the family that struggled for survival throughout the uncertain war years is now together. But family life settles into a routine, and Rachel, unsatisfied, starts to yearn for more.

The early 1900s: Cradley Heath, a town in the Black Country near Birmingham and centre of the world’s chain-making trade. Lucy Butler, a young girl crippled by a cruel accident, lives with her two brothers and widowed mother, a chain-maker barely making ends meet. When tragedy strikes, the Butler family is separated and Lucy is taken in by Bertha Hipkiss, another impoverished chain maker, struggling to look after her own family.

Sisters Margaret and Annie lost their mother years ago; they long for her every day. Their frightfully protective father keeps the girls close, but he can't protect them forever.... When a scandal rocks the family, the girls are forced to leave their home. The girls flee to Birmingham's jewellery quarter to stay with the one person they can rely on - Uncle Goldsmith. Annie takes up work at a nearby factory, where she learns to forge cutlery, and Margaret is employed as a chain maker.

Evie spent her early years left outside on the step. With a drunk for a father and a neglectful mother, all little Evie has ever craved is a safe home and a normal existence. Her young eyes had seen so much, but this never tainted her spirit. If it wasn't for her best friend, Gary, and a friendly dog called Whisky, Evie might never have made it to her 16th birthday.

August 1939. Genie Watkins, a Birmingham kid, would love to have a proper happy family like her Italian friend, Teresa. But Genie hasn't reckoned with the outbreak of war, her already rocky family being split up and the strangely liberating effect it all has on her mother.... Under Birmingham skies darkened by blackout, Genie shares her fears and hopes with Teresa, keeps her spirits up with her nan and glamorous auntie Lil, and tries to hold her family together. And amid it all, she discovers love....

In the New Year of 1936, Gwen Purdy, aged 21, leaves her home to become a schoolteacher in a poor area of Birmingham. Her parents are horrified, but she has the support of her fiance, a recently ordained clergyman. Her early weeks in Birmingham are an eye-opener: at the school she faces a class of 52 children, some of whose homes are among Birmingham's very poorest.

Lilac Street was a crowded, sooty-faced, workaday place, the houses full and the streets teeming with children. One thing it was, without a doubt, was full of life. Birmingham, almost a decade after the end of the Great War, and the women of Lilac Street have had more than their fair share of troubles.... Rose Southgate is trapped, bringing up her daughter in a loveless marriage. Shy and isolated, she tries to make the best of her life, until she meets a man who changes everything.

Pretty 17-year-old Greta has never known a stable family life. With no father, and loathing her mother Ruby's latest boyfriend, Greta finds life hard at home and is happiest at work with her friends at the Cadbury factory in Birmingham where she is popular with the boys. Life takes a turn for the worse when her missing vixen of a sister Marleen turns up during the freezing winter of 1962.

Jo and Ian’s marriage is hanging by a thread. One night almost two years ago, their only child, Paul, died in an accident that should never have happened. They have recently moved to a new area of Birmingham, to be near Ian’s mother, Dorrie, who is increasingly frail. As Jo spends more time with her mother-in-law, she suspects Dorrie wants to unburden herself of a secret that has cast a long shadow over her family. Haunted by the death of her son, Jo catches a glimpse of a young boy in a magazine who resembles Paul. Reading the article, she learns of a tragedy in India.

1915. Margaret and Philip Tallis are happily married, have a thriving business and three children, Daisy, John and Lily. At 20, Daisy is an impassioned, headstrong girl, determined to follow her parents’ footsteps in Birmingham’s jewellery trade. While studying at the college for silversmiths she meets an old rival of her father’s. James Carson is married, but Daisy finds herself dangerously drawn to him.... As war tightens its grip on the country, the Jewellery Quarter is thrown into anguish as the men are forced to decide who will enlist.

Jo and Ian’s marriage is hanging by a thread. One night almost two years ago, their only child, Paul, died in an accident that should never have happened. They have recently moved to a new area of Birmingham, to be near Ian’s mother, Dorrie, who is increasingly frail. As Jo spends more time with her mother-in-law, she suspects Dorrie wants to unburden herself of a secret that has cast a long shadow over her family. Haunted by the death of her son, Jo catches a glimpse of a young boy in a magazine who resembles Paul. Reading the article, she learns of a tragedy in India.

August 1939. Genie Watkins, a Birmingham kid, would love to have a proper happy family like her Italian friend, Teresa. But Genie hasn't reckoned with the outbreak of war, her already rocky family being split up and the strangely liberating effect it all has on her mother.... Under Birmingham skies darkened by blackout, Genie shares her fears and hopes with Teresa, keeps her spirits up with her nan and glamorous auntie Lil, and tries to hold her family together. And amid it all, she discovers love....

For Rose Lucas, a spirited, intelligent girl born into a large family in the slums of pre-war Birmingham, life is hard. But through her friendship with Diana, daughter of a vicar from middle-class Moseley, she learns to aspire to a different and better existence. But life seldom follows dreams, and after losing a love she has fought hard for, and after travelling in Italy, she returns to Birmingham with her hopes shattered. But Rose's powerful spirit will not be defeated.

Working at the local pearl button factory, Ada Fletcher is doing her best to make ends meet in trying times.

Abandoned at birth, little Mercy Hanley shows a fierce determination few others can match. Her inner fire burns brightly, even in the harsh conditions of turn of the century Birmingham. For behind Mercy's pale and haunting face, there is a mind of steel, as her harsh foster mother, Mrs Gaskin, soon discovers. Beatings, threats, and poverty cannot halt Mercy's efforts to improve herself, or to create a new life for Susan, Mrs Gaskin's crippled daughter.

Rachel Booker has a difficult start in life. When her father dies deep in gambling debt, her mother must harden herself to make ends meet but becomes so hard she has little room left for affection or warmth. Mother and daughter work at the open market in Birmingham, selling second-hand clothes or whatever they can find just to put a little food on the table. But the market has a silver lining: it's there that Rachel makes her first childhood friend, Danny.

The Second World War has finally come to a close. Birmingham is welcoming home its menfolk, and a new chapter is beginning in Rachel Booker's life. Her husband has returned, and the family that struggled for survival throughout the uncertain war years is now together. But family life settles into a routine, and Rachel, unsatisfied, starts to yearn for more.

Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down. In 2013, 29-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email.

Two very different girls from this tight-knit community join up as ARP Wardens to do their bit for the home front. Violet Simms lives with her controlling, widowed mother who runs the local pawn shop. At just 20-years-old, Violet longs for friendship, love and escape. It seems her dreams might come true until tragedy strikes on one of the very worst nights of the Birmingham Blitz. Grace Templeton is the eldest in her family of 10 children. Spirited Grace is determined never to become burdened by child bearing and drudgery like her mother.