Book description
This is Joan's story, one of four stories from The Sugar Girls. During
the Blitz and the years of rationing, the Sugar Girls kept Britain
sweet. The work was back-breakingly hard, but the Tate & Lyle
factory was more than just a workplace - it was a community, a calling,
a place of love and support and an uproarious, tribal part of East London.
'Joan had joined Tate & Lyle expressly for the social life, and
she was determined to make the most of it. She could see that her old
friend Peggy already had an established group of her own among the
sugar girls, so she set about building a new set of friends. It wasn't
difficult for Joan, whose cheerful self-confidence, natural chattiness
and naughty sense of humour acted as a magnet to those around her.'
In the years leading up to and after the Second World War thousands
of women left school at fourteen to work in the bustling factories of
London's East End. Despite long hours, hard and often hazardous work,
factory life afforded exciting opportunities for independence,
friendship and romance. Of all the factories that lined the docks, it
was at Tate and Lyle's where you could earn the most generous wages
and enjoy the best social life, and it was here where The Sugar Girls worked.
This is an evocative, moving story of hunger, hardship and happiness,
providing a moving insight into a lost way of life, as well as a
timeless testament to the experience of being young and female.
Includes Joan's own personal photographs of life as a sugar girl.
Duncan Barrett studied English at Cambridge and now works as writer
and editor, specialising in biography and memoir. He most recently
edited The Reluctant Tommy (Macmillan, 2010) a First World War memoir.
Nuala Calvi also studied English and has been a journalist for eight
years with a strong interest in community history pieces. She took part
in the Streatham Stories project to document the lives and memories of
people in South London. They live in South London.
