… the number of people able to give a first hand account of day-to-day life in the early part of the last century naturally diminishes. The small but telling detail disappears. Ethel May Elvin was born in 1906; she recalls her father’s account of standing sentry at Queen Victoria’s funeral, the privations and small pleasures of a working-class Edwardian childhood, growing up through the First World War and surviving the Second. Anyone intrigued by the small events of history, how the majority actually lived day to day, will find this a unique and fascinating book.