Mary Chamberlain

The story of a brilliant English seamstress taken prisoner in Germany during World War II: about her perseverance, the choices she makes to stay alive, and the haunting aftermath of war.

The Dressmaker's War

Spanning the intense years of war, The Dressmaker of Dachau is a dramatic tale of love, conflict, betrayal and survival. It is the compelling story of one young woman's resolve to endure and of the choices she must make at every turn - choices which will contain truths she must confront.

The Dressmaker of Dachau

'Beautifully crafted, elegantly written, with characters to root for - I loved this heart-stopping tale.' Saskia Sarginson, author of The Bench How do you rebuild a life from the ashes of despair? London 1958. Twenty-six-year-old Betty Fisher is one of the first to join the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and attend its inaugural meeting, where she meets John Harris. Posted to Berlin towards the end of the war, John has been left traumatised by his experiences in Germany. And, as his initial admiration for Betty shifts into an overwhelming need to protect her, he is plagued by flashbacks and fantasies. John's increasing fragility brings to the surface Betty's own memories. And soon her past, too, begins to unravel...

The Forgotten

La sarta di Dachau

"Uma história empolgante, brilhantemente contada. Eu não consegui parar de ler! Ada Vaughan é uma personagem apaixonante: incrivelmente real, imperfeita e sedutora." — Saskia Sarginson, autora best-sellerUma história de amor, guerra, traição e sobrevivênciaPassado entre o glamour de Paris e o desespero dos campos de concentração, A costureira de Dachau conta a história de uma mulher traída e abandonada, que precisa sobreviver sozinha em meio às tragédias da maior guerra que o mundo já enfrentou. Suas razões podem parecer suspeitas, e não há certeza de sua inocência...Quando Ada por fim acredita estar em sua busca por redenção, o passado bate à sua porta. Forçada a enfrentar seus fantasmas e os segredos de sua vida que tanto buscara superar, ela será obrigada a decidir entre a verdade e a sobrevivência.Cada pessoa passa por uma guerra pessoal. Qual seria a de Ada Vaughan?

A costureira de Dachau

Her heart died in the war o can she breathe new life to it? Dora Simon and Joe O'Cleary live in separate countries, accepting of their twilight years. But their monochrome worlds are abruptly upended by the arrival of Barbara Hummel, who is determined to identify the mysterious woman whose photograph she has found among her mother's possessions. Forced to confront a time they thought buried in the past, Dora and Joe's lives unravel o and entwine. For, trapped on the Channel Islands under the German occupation in the Second World War, Dora, a Jewish refugee, had concealed her identity; while Joe, a Catholic priest, kept quite another secret... This is a story of love and betrayal, shame and survival. But can a speck of light diffuse the darkest shadows of war?

The Hidden

Londra, 1939. Ada Vaughan non ha ancora compiuto diciotto anni quando capisce che basta un sogno per disegnare il proprio destino. E il suo è quello di diventare una sarta famosa, aprire una casa di moda, realizzare abiti per le donne più eleganti della sua città. Ha da poco cominciato a lavorare presso una sartoria in Dover Street, e la vita sembra sorriderle. Un viaggio imprevisto a Parigi le fa toccare con mano i confini del suo sogno: stoffe preziose, tagli raffinati, ricami dorati. Ma la guerra allunga la sua ombra senza pietà. Ada è intrappolata in Francia, senza la possibilità di ritornare a casa. Senza soldi, senza un rifugio, Ada non ha colpe, se non quella di trovarsi nel posto sbagliato. Ma i soldati nazisti non si fermano davanti a niente. Viene deportata nel campo di concentramento di Dachau. Lì, dove il freddo si insinua senza scampo fino in fondo alle ossa, circondata da occhi vuoti per la fame e la disperazione, Ada si aggrappa all’unica cosa che le rimane, il suo sogno. L’unica cosa che la tiene in vita. La sua abilità con ago e filo le permette di lavorare per la moglie del comandante del campo. Gli abiti prodotti da Ada nei lunghi anni di prigionia sono sempre più ricercati, nonostante le ristrettezze belliche. La sua fama travalica le mura di Dachau e arriva fino alle più alte gerarchie naziste. Le viene commissionato un abito che dovrà essere il più bello che abbia mai confezionato. Un vestito da sera nero, con una rosa rossa. Ma Ada non sa che quello che le sue mani stanno creando non è un abito qualsiasi. Sarà l’abito da sposa di Eva Braun, l’amante del Führer... La sarta di Dachau è un caso editoriale mondiale. Venduto in 26 paesi, ha conquistato il cuore dei librai e dei lettori inglesi. Una storia di orrore e di speranza, di vite spezzate e della capacità di sopravvivere grazie ai propri sogni. La storia di una donna che non si arrende e che continua a lottare anche quando tutto sembra perduto.

Hidden

Originally published in 1975, Fenwomen was the first non-fiction book published by Virago. A vivid social and oral history of an isolated village in the Cambridgeshire Fens, it provides a unique portrait, spanning nearly 100 years, via the previously unheard voices of the women who lived there, of a community where there were virtually no professional or middle-class people, where intermarriage was common and a single family owned all the village land. Fenwomen was in a tradition stretching through Ronald Blythe (Akenfield) and 20 years further back to the true pioneer of English oral history, George Ewart Evans, with his publication Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay (1956).

A Portrait of Women in an English Village

Fenwomen

London, spring 1939. 18-year-old Ada Vaughan, a beautiful and ambitious seamstress, has just started work for a modiste in Dover Street. A career in couture is hers for the taking - she has the skill and the drive - if only she can break free from the dreariness of family life in Lambeth. A chance meeting with the enigmatic Stanislaus von Lieben catapults Ada into a world of glamour and romance. When he suggests a trip to Paris, Ada is blind to all the warnings of war on the continent: this is her chance for a new start. Anticipation turns to despair when war is declared and the two are trapped in France. When the Nazis invade, Stanislaus abandons her and she is taken prisoner, sent to Germany as slave labour and forced to survive on her wits alone.

Londres, 1939. Ada Vaughan es una joven y ambiciosa costurera cuyo gran sueño es abrir, algún día, su propia boutique y convertirse en una aclamada modista. Cuando se enamora de Stanislaus von Lieben, un seductor aristócrata húngaro, cree posible hacer realidad sus sueños. Juntos viajan a París, pero el inminente estallido de la segunda guerra mundial trunca todos sus planes... Perdida y sola en un país extranjero, Ada ha quedado atrapada por la guerra, y deberá hacer todo lo que esté en sus manos para sobrevivir. En medio del horror, el don de Ada para crear belleza y glamour es lo único que la mantiene con vida, y pasará sus días confeccionando elegantes vestidos para las mujeres de los dirigentes de las SS. Cosió para salvarse, para seguir adelante sin mirar atrás. Pero cuando pensaba que todo había terminado tuvo que enfrentarse al fin a la verdad: nunca podría recuperar lo que había perdido en el camino. La modista de Dover Street nos descubre a una heroína inolvidable, Ada Vaughan, una mujer enfrentada a su destino que deberá sacrificar su corazón para salvar su vida. Una historia de valor y sueños. Una lección de coraje y supervivencia.

La modista de Dover Street

We may all know that dandelions make us wet the bed, and that stewed prunes are a cure for constipation, but how many of us were aware that a poultice of chicken manure is a remedy for baldness? Or that eel liver will aid a difficult labour? The woman healer is as old as history. For millennia she has been doctor, nurse and midwife, and even in the age of modern medicine her wisdom is handed down in the form of old wives’ tales. Using extensive research into archives and original texts, and numerous conversations with women in city and countryside, Mary Chamberlain presents a stimulating challenge to the history of orthodox medicine and an illuminating survey of female wisdom which goes back to the earliest times. What are old wives’ tales? Where do they come from? Do they really work? These questions, and many more, are answered in this fascinating compendium of remedies and cures handed down from mother to daughter from the beginning of time.

The History of Remedies, Charms and Spells

Old Wives' Tales

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Spring 1939. Taken prisoner by the Nazis, eighteen-year-old Ada is forced into a life of slavery and horror in Dachau concentration camp. Her skill as a seamstress is the only bargaining chip she has against the brutal SS guards. Back in London, she dreamed of being a world-renowned designer; now she must sew to save her life...but at what cost? For readers of THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ and THE LIBRARIAN OF AUSCHWITZ, this is a powerful and moving story of courage and resilience, betrayal and passion.

Colonial social policy in the British West Indies from the nineteenth century onward assumed that black families lacked morals, structure, and men, a void that explained poverty and lack of citizenship. African-Caribbean families appeared as the mirror opposite of the "ideal" family advocated by the white, colonial authorities. Yet contrary to this image, what provided continuity in the period and contributed to survival was in fact the strength of family connections, their inclusivity and support. This study is based on 150 life story narratives across three generations of forty-five families who originated in the former British West Indies. The author focuses on the particular axes of Caribbean peoples from the former British colonies of Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, and Great Britain. Divided into four parts, the chapters within each present an oral history of migrant African-Caribbean families, demonstrating the varieties, organization, and dynamics of family through their memories and narratives. It traces the evolution of Caribbean life; argues how the family can be seen as the tool that helps transmit and transform historical mentalities; examines the dynamics of family life; and makes comparisons with Indo-Caribbean families. Above all, this is a story of families that evolved, against the odds of slavery and poverty, to form a distinct Creole form, through which much of the social history of the English-speaking Caribbean is refracted. "Family Love in the Diaspora" offers an important new perspective on African-Caribbean families, their history, and the problems they face, for now and the future. It offers a long overdue historical dimension to the debates on Caribbean families.

Migration and the Anglo-Caribbean Experience

Family Love in the Diaspora

Paul Thompson

Any life story, whether a written autobiography or an oral testimony, is shaped not only by the reworkings of experience through memory and re-evaluation, but also art. Any communication has to use shared conventions not only of language itself but also the more complex expectations of 'genre': of the forms expected within a given context and type of communication. This collection of essays by internationl academics draws on a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities to examine how far the expectations and forms of genre shape different kinds of autobiography and influence what messages they can convey. After investigating the problem of genre definition, and tracing the evolution of genre as a concept, contributors explore such issues as: * How far can we argue that what people narrate in their autobiographical stories is selected and shaped by the reportoire of genre available to them? * To what extent is oral autobiography shaped by its social and cultural context? * What is the relationship between autobiographical sources and the ethnographer? Narrative and Genre presents exciting new debates in an emerging field and will encourage international and interdisciplinary debate. Its authors and contributors are scholars from the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, literary analysis, psychoanalysis, social history, and sociology.

Mary Chamberlain

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