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Dorothy Scannell

'Cheer up,' said Mother. 'Don't make your unhappy life miserable.'
Before Jennifer Worth and other East End memoirists, there was Dorothy 'Dolly' Scannell.
In the East End of Dolly's childhood, people met poverty and hardship with unfailing optimism and humour. Dolly grew up with nine brothers and sisters, her father - a plumber earning ?2 a week and a man who believed that 'all aristocratic men were disease-ridden and possessed bald-headed wives because of the rich food and wine they consumed' - and of course Mother, who cared for her large brood with rare wisdom, laughter, and unbounded love.
The menagerie also occasionally included members of the animal kingdom, but no mere cats and dogs - instead there were chinchillas, cannibalistic chickens, a ferocious eel kept in a pail of water, and even, eventually, the pride of mother's wardrobe, a kangaroo-fur coat.
With the sure touch of a natural story-teller, who combines a perfect memory with a true writer's gift, Dolly vividly recreates her childhood world: the streets in which she played - and the playground where she was rescued from a child molester; the local shops and the adulterated goods sold within; the new house that her father was going to pay for with his ever-madder schemes to make a fortune, such as a revolutionary kind of truss.
'A proper treat, I can tell you, bright as Pearlie buttons, colourful as a street market' Evening Standard

Dean Street Press

Dorothy Scannell's East End Memoirs

Mother Knew Best: Memoirs of a London Girlhood

On a narrow wooden armchair-bed was lying our hostess. Her nightdress was up round her neck. The organist, on his knees, in the nude, was deep in prayer, his face bent in reverence over his bride's prostrate form.
Ever so slowly the organist raised his horrified eyes to ours. My sister, extremely slow to take in the delicacy of any situation, murmured, half to herself, 'That's funny, I could have sworn he was clean-shaven.'
Dolly Scannell, author of East End classic memoir Mother Knew Best, has now established her home front, wife to the embattled Chas, and proud keeper of her own house. Life is still full of small but piquant joys, sorrows and bizarre happenstances - like Dolly's need to take her household rubbish back to her mother for fear of her new landlord. Before long she's a mum as well, but then comes the war and her cheerful wit and unquenchable spirit are needed more than ever.
Gas masks, ration books, GI's (over-sexed, etc), a chaotic Jewish wedding, husband Chas in the Army, while Dolly takes on his insurance selling door-to-door, encounters a murderous landlady and spends time evacuated from her beloved London to Wales and Suffolk - before being restored to her beloved and enormous family, her mother still matriach of all. A treasure, recalled and retold by the author at her inimitable best!
'The author of Mother Knew Best in hilarious vein' Yorkshire Post
'You have to laugh with Dolly Scannell. Somehow that Cockney flow of funny tales shakes you up into laughter' Evening Standard

Dolly's War: A Memoir from the Home Front

The Guild's guest speaker told us of his great joy when, walking one day, he espied a lady who possessed an unusual knocker. He offered her £3 for this collector's item and she was thrilled to be able to unscrew it on the spot for him. He said he happily left a knockerless lady holding in her hand his three £1 notes. Did we think he had robbed the lady?
It's the 1950's, and Dolly and her husband Chas are now Grocers and Provision Merchants. Owning a shop was a childhood dream of Dolly's, though it wouldn't have happened had Dolly's rice puddings been a little better. And it is at this relatively advanced age, amid the continuing adventures and misadventures of Dolly's eccentric and hilarious family, Dolly finds a best friend for the first time in her life.
'You have to laugh with Dolly Scannell. Somehow that Cockney flow of funny tales shakes you up into laughter' Evening Standard