When winifred foley was young, her family was poor. They lived in a small cottage in a small village. She had seven brothers and sisters. She slept with her three sisters in a small room
When she grew up, she wanted to be a dancer and a singer, but she could not because she have to work very hard. When she left to school, she was very sad. She was not good at the mathematics, but she liked readingand writing.

Winifred Foley, who died at age 94, 60, and lived in rural isolation with her forest worker husband when her first and only important book was published. The radio was one of her daytime companions, and through Radio 4 Woman's Hour, A Child in the Forest, was housed in the Dean's Forest in western Gloucestershire in the years. 1920, formed.

In the late 1960s, social historian John Burnett, a pioneer of the concept of autobiography as a source of material for working-class life research, appealed to listeners about the material. to be announced. Among the dog ear books, handwritten exercise books that appear in his way are a more bulky bundle and dog ears than most. Undeterred, he read it, and was impressed enough to pass it on to Pamela Howe, a radio producer who later worked for a regional version of Women's Hour in Bristol.

Equally appealing, Howe took some time to cross the Severn Bridge to meet the author, and the first result of their collaboration, in early 1973, was a Women's Hour series, by Virginia Browne. -Wilkinson adjustable. The book, intriguingly packed by the BBC, continued in 1974. Many subsequent editions were made, and a revised version titled Full Hearts and Empty Bellies was recently published by Abacus.

Foley was never slow to admit the part played by her collaborators, especially Howe. She was also fortunate in her time, from the mid-1970s, as it is today, to a time when many people yearn to escape the harsh realities of life, and the nostalgia for simplicity in the countryside. Real or imagined is very high on the agenda.


Her memoirs were largely sold to a middle-class reader who caught up with James Herriot's vet series, Miss Read's Fairacre novel and then, now, the revival of Lark Rise. for Candleford trio. Edith Holden's natural note in 1906, repackaged into a Edwardian Lady's Country Diary, followed in 1977, while Laurie Lee's Cider and Rosie continued to grow. Foley's book, while selling less than these, deserves to be placed with them in the vanguard of this category.

Even so, her relationship with the middle class is always conflicting. A child in the forest - starting in the difficult fishing village of Brierley, near Cinderford, where she was born Winifred Mason, and continuing her early years of family service in London, Cheltenham and elsewhere - extremely bare profane, heartless and harsh. The two most influential on her thinking, her exploiting father and Syd's husband, both played their roles in shaping her drastic socialist views.

However, it was the founding characters that changed her life - Burnett and the various well-connected literary women at the BBC, and writer Julian Mitchell, who adapted the book into a movie. television Abide with Me for BBC television in 1976. It was filmed in 2001, this time under the original title, in the adaptation of Julia Jones for HTV West.

Foley is grateful for this book's enthusiasm, but is still confused. "I think I came out from there like a very normal girl, with all the usual mistakes," she said. "I wouldn't be surprised, after it was published, if kind people didn't want to know me." At the time, Foleys was living in a forest-bound house in the Huntley estate, west of Gloucester, where Sydney worked in a sawmill. It was a relief when she heard that the book was well received at the "big house".

In the years that followed, she liked her position as a local celebrity and encouraged good reasons, especially if they were related to young people, but not always. Twenty-two years of raising four children in the forest at first initially fascinated her, not simply reluctant to walk to the village to shop or bus, but really scared.

Income from the book gave Foleys a pleasant home at Cliffords Mesne, in the northwestern countryside of Gloucestershire near Newent. Syd, a thoughtful man, loved and supported his wife until his death in 1998, but at first he found her popularity difficult to handle. That's not what he expected his retirement to be like in a rural area dominated by men like Dean.

Less autobiographical works follow: No Daddy's Dream in 1977, Back to the Forest in 1981 and Inside and Out of the Jungle - first published in 1984 and then rewritten. Foley wondered that, produced by local publishers, they would be subjected to less strict editing than her first book, but they were well received.

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