A war bride who worked in comedy revues and nightclubs before and during the war, as a child, teenager and young adult, and who also worked in Hollywood recounts her memories and her brushes with greatness.
When Pauline was a child, Margaret Thatcher's father owned a grocery down the road from her grandmother's house and she played with Margaret. As a teenager, she went to school with Judy Garland. As a film stand-in, she had tea with Glynis Johns. She had a flirtation with British espionage during the war, before her mother put a stop to it. She worked in a pantomime produced by a member of the Astor family.
Here's my favorite passage in the book, from pp. 106-107:
One summer evening in 1940, when the war was heating up, my mother and I were home alone, and she was cooking in the kitchen, when Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke on the radio. His famous speech was being broadcasted about how we would all fight with anything and everything in our power to stop the aggressors, if they dared to invade our homeland.
His voice came across the airwaves in his heavy, guttural, determined "growl" that had become so familiar to the British people: "..We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the field and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!"\
My mother stopped what she was doing, looked at me doubtfully and said, sarcastically, "Oh yer .. oh fine."
But I was really flustered by the possibility.
"What will we do if the Germans invade England? What are we going to do?" I asked her. "Supposing the Germans do land and they march down Charing Cross Road, and come up here and knock on the door?"
She went to the kitchen counter and pulled out a drawer and took out two sharp knives. "I've got two knives here, one for you and one for me," she said. "If they come through that door we get as many as we can."
I felt relieved knowing what I was supposed to do. I felt better knowing there was a plan, even if it could have ended in a blood bath. The plan that I was to knife as many Nazis as I can, and get it over with quickly. Luckily, I didn't have to do that.
When Pauline was a child, Margaret Thatcher's father owned a grocery down the road from her grandmother's house and she played with Margaret. As a teenager, she went to school with Judy Garland. As a film stand-in, she had tea with Glynis Johns. She had a flirtation with British espionage during the war, before her mother put a stop to it. She worked in a pantomime produced by a member of the Astor family.
Here's my favorite passage in the book, from pp. 106-107:
One summer evening in 1940, when the war was heating up, my mother and I were home alone, and she was cooking in the kitchen, when Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke on the radio. His famous speech was being broadcasted about how we would all fight with anything and everything in our power to stop the aggressors, if they dared to invade our homeland.
His voice came across the airwaves in his heavy, guttural, determined "growl" that had become so familiar to the British people: "..We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the field and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!"\
My mother stopped what she was doing, looked at me doubtfully and said, sarcastically, "Oh yer .. oh fine."
But I was really flustered by the possibility.
"What will we do if the Germans invade England? What are we going to do?" I asked her. "Supposing the Germans do land and they march down Charing Cross Road, and come up here and knock on the door?"
She went to the kitchen counter and pulled out a drawer and took out two sharp knives. "I've got two knives here, one for you and one for me," she said. "If they come through that door we get as many as we can."
I felt relieved knowing what I was supposed to do. I felt better knowing there was a plan, even if it could have ended in a blood bath. The plan that I was to knife as many Nazis as I can, and get it over with quickly. Luckily, I didn't have to do that.
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