MABEL'S WAR: Love and Hope Beyond the Blitz

'The legacy of horrendous suffering and sacrifice in the First World War was there from the day I was born...' Few people are still alive to recall the time when our defenceless towns and cities were bombed. One is 93 year old Mabel Hewitt who stands tall among them as a spirited and eloquent eyewitness, and her story is inspiring, enriching and a revelation. Her earliest memories are of a crowded house in Coventry's city suburb with her six siblings, parents, grandmother and an uncle. The notorious attack of 14th November 1940 when Coventry was set ablaze in Britain's longest night of German bombing raids is etched into her memory. She was hiding in the family's Anderson shelter. The city's medieval cathedral, firebombed into rubble and ashes, was at the heart of an extraordinary campaign of reconciliation and forgiveness just a few days later. Mable was to learn assertiveness in the workplace when she left school at 14 to work in the local munitions factory. With her gentle humour she takes us from the tumultuous 1930s when the threat of the poorhouse hung over working families like hers to days of love and hope when she found herself in a warm and loving family with John Hewitt and his kind parents. 176 page illustrated paperback.