The Stepney Doorstep Society is a heartfelt and entertaining celebration of strong, intelligent, working-class women who took on not only poverty, but also Hitler’s Third Reich, in a never-ending struggle to care for their families and support their community.

A Boomer friend of mine, born a few years after WW2 ended, spent his childhood playing on London bomb sites and has the scars to prove it. I know the district this book is about and in the past I met many elderly people who had been through the kind of experiences described. While I was reading it, I wondered if I might have encountered some of the old ladies who shared their memories with Kate Thompson, because their voices came across as genuine and familiar.