Queen Victoria and Ping-pong

Fireside teas, shopping for ribbons, a half-sovereign in a little box and a vase of wild flowers on the parlour table. Marjory writes of the simple pleasures of ordinary folk's lives in a period now generally consigned to the glass case of history. Covering a three year period in Edwardian suburbia, a world of very local horizons, the teenager's meticulously kept diaries speak only briefly of Earth shattering events, but buzz with all the intricacies of everyday routine and the frailties of human emotions. But the darker side, too, creeps in: Influenza, early death, soot-filled kitchens and the endless scrubbing of hallway floors and porches. This was the world in which our great grandparents lived. Beneath the material deposits of the intervening one hundred years, Marjory's world is still present.