Walking My Walworth

Maggie is a young girl growing up in Walworth in the sixties. She is shy, though her friends and family know her cheeky side all too well! Times are hard - sometimes heart-wrenchingly so - and harder still for a girl who spends a lot of time in her own head.This refreshing change from the usual mass-market memoir is as much a portrait of a specific place and time as it is of a childhood. Stories of bed bugs and hop-picking and knicker elastic, playground songs and street games unfold against a gritty South East London backdrop. This isn't the London you know today, nor one you can read about elsewhere. This is Maggie's London, told in her own, young words.Charming yet raw and all the more poignant for being real, Maggie's voice is so powerful, you can almost feel her heart beat through the page. And you'll be surprised, no matter how hard things sometimes get, at just how far a smile can take you.Front cover photograph credit: Johnson/HG1378-001 (RM)/Getty Images