Break These Chains

London. 1965. It is not all wonder and delight. Serious, violet-eyed nineteen-year-old Lydia is scared of love and passion, handicapped by the secrets and trauma of her childhood on the Solway Firth. But she is ready for real life to begin.

In a world before the pill, her defences are tested when she falls in love with a sports car mechanic, part of a smart, shady circle. Weaving her uncertain way through the glittering opportunities and pitfalls of a changing society, the old-fashioned values of her doting grandmother and her serious civil service job, it is when Lydia inherits a brasserie in run-down Notting Hill that her journey really begins.

But can she find her way through love and loss, family secrets and the first stirrings of feminism?