If you have bought my book, 'Lost Basildon', you may have read a personal anecdote of mine on the last page. I have done a tribute to my Nan, Amelia. She certainly contributed to my interest in history, I remember so well her telling me stories of our family. She had two sisters and six brothers, and worshipped Polly her mother. She admired how she coped with all her children, somehow always getting a meal on the table. She had a very colourful life in London and loved to tell us about it, bringing the past to life passionately and articulately. She was brought up in Clerkenwell by a half-English half-Irish mother and an Italian father, most of her siblings looked Italian.
Family was her main concern. Nanny Milly, as I called her, was a listening ear and a loving heart to all of our family. She was naturally an entertainer and comedienne, and when her and Grandad got together they could be a comedy duo and I needed them in my life as I was growing up. When my own two children came along she also entertained them with her naughty sense of humour.
I miss my grandparents including Alf, Amelia's husband, a very loveable, apple-cheeked man who was in the Royal Navy in World War 2.
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