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  • Published: 15 September 2006
  • ISBN: 9781845961503
  • Imprint: Mainstream Publishing
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $37.99

Battersea Girl

Tracing a London Life




A couple of years ago, Martin Knight began a quest to delve into his family history. He had a head start on many amateur genealogists, as 30 years earlier he had produced a school project on the very subject. The project was based on the papers and oral history of his then elderly grandmother, Ellen Tregent. Martin dusted this off and began to assemble the chain of events that shaped his grandmother's life. He even made contact with several living relatives who had known Ellen or some of the people and events she described.

Ellen Tregent was born in 1888 and died in 1988 - her lifetime encompassing an unprecedented century of social change and world upheaval. She was born into a poor working-class family in Battersea, London. Her grandfather had arrived from Ireland 40 years earlier to escape almost certain death as potato famine ravaged his country.

In Battersea Girl, Martin Knight charts Ellen's long and eventful life and the lives of her siblings. They encounter abject poverty, disease, suicide, murder, war and inevitably death, but, equally, the spirit of stoical people who were determined to make the most of their lives shines through in this enchanting book.

  • Published: 15 September 2006
  • ISBN: 9781845961503
  • Imprint: Mainstream Publishing
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $37.99

About the author

Martin Knight

Peter Osgood played for Chelsea and Southampton, and was also capped four times by England in the early 1970s. He died in 2006.

Martin King is the author of A Boy's Story, The Estate and The South Downs Way, and Martin Knight is the author of the novel Common People. Together they have co-written Hoolifan, The Naughty Nineties and On the Cobbles.

Also by Martin Knight

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Praise for Battersea Girl

An affectionate and semi-dramatised account of working-class life

Your Family Tree

The range of subjects that the book touches upon is absolutely phenomenal . . . a superb piece of social history

Morning Star

By the end of the book I knew Nell so well, and I admired and loved her. I also knew what it was like to be a working-class woman before feminism had kicked in...absolutely fascinating

Neil Dunn, author of Up the Junction

A marvellously detailed chronicle of social history...The cumulative power of the narrative is a remarkable achievement

Alan Sillitoe, author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning