Here’s Flo again. She always had a smile on her face, no matter how hard we worked or how tired we got.
The young lad in the back row, far left, is loyal farmhand George Thornton, Louis’s younger brother, aged about seventeen. I fear I broke that poor man’s heart.
Mr Orchard, the snooty butler who kept a watchful eye on me and my shenanigans. He was always giving me a telling-off but, looking back, I probably deserved it!
Me in the grounds of Woodhall, in a rare moment off duty, aged about eighteen.
This is beautiful Wallington Hall where I worked as a cook. The ancient shooting lodge, set in 600 acres of private grounds, is mentioned in the Domesday Book. It even had its own resident ghost.
Here I am, a fresh-faced cook, aged about twenty-two.
Me and Timothy on our wedding day, Saturday 5 November 1938. We’re outside my mother’s farmhouse, where we held the reception. Only the day before I’d been cooking for politicians and VIPs.
This is me, a newly-wed, just before the outbreak of the Second World War. Every so often my husband would take me out to dances and I’d dress up beautifully, always in a hat and pearls.
The man of my dreams, Timothy, on active service in India, where he was stationed for most of the war. I worried about him out there more than I did about the threat of invasion.
Larking about shortly after the birth of my son, Timothy James, in 1946.
Me and my son, Timothy James, aged two. We had our photos taken at Selfridges for half a crown. The war was over but rationing was still biting, so photos like this were a small, affordable pleasure.
On board HMS Clyde in 1954, sailing back from Singapore. I’m sat to the right wearing a scoop-neck dress. Timothy was on board another ship that had set sail weeks earlier. As an officer’s wife you were given first-class service, and had servants to run your bath, warm up your toilet seat and pour your gin and tonic.
Acknowledgements
With grateful thanks to:
Orion Books for allowing reproduction of recipes and excerpts from Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management.
Universal Media for the reproduction of excerpts from the film Frankenstein.
Friends of Mosley (FOM) and Mr Max Mosley for allowing reproduction of Oswald Mosley’s speeches.
Andrew Luddington, Mr and Mrs Charlesworth of Woodhall, Tian and John Plaxton of Wallington Hall, Flo Wadlow (author of Over a Hot Stove, Mousehold Press, 2007) and Alan Childs (editor of Over a Hot Stove) for their help in the history, research and photography of Woodhall, Wallington Hall, Norfolk, and Cadogan Square, Knightsbridge.
Katherine Stone, PhD student, War Studies Department, King’s College London.
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PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published 2013
Text and photographs copyright © Mollie Moran, 2013
Cover image: Mary Evans Picture Library / SIMON ROBERTS
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The moral right of the author has been asserted
Some names have been changed to protect identities
Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire
ISBN: 978-0-718-19718-6
Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid Page 30