Me and Mine
Anna May Mangan

Leaving home was a simple ‘sail or starve’ choice for Anna Mangan’s aunts and uncles; there was no work in rural Ireland, nor any prospect of it. Letters from friends and neighbours already working in London told proudly of flushing toilets, electricity, running hot water and dances seven nights a week. One by one they set off for London, envied by the brothers and sisters they left behind. But home is never far away as aunts and uncles meet up in Irish dance halls, or smuggle poteen disguised as holy water in Virgin Mary-shaped bottles, and gossip is delivered weekly in the form of the local county paper.