Melanie & The Miners' Strike by Victoria P. Gill - Historical Fiction Novel About British Labor Movement - Perfect for Book Clubs & History Enthusiasts

Product Description

PVictoria P. Gill198018



2198418231 P



Melanie & The Miners’ Strike is an unfiltered portrait of working-class youth in 1980s Leeds, captured through the eyes of 18-year-old Melanie and rediscovered decades later by her daughter, Victoria. Edited by Victoria P. Gill, the book weaves candid snapshots with reflections from Melanie and her lifelong friends, offering a moving and often funny glimpse into friendship, resilience and everyday life during the Thatcher years.

The project came to IDEA by way of Melanie’s daughter Victoria who walked into the office with a box full of pictures of her mother’s old photo snaps. Victoria has edited the book and explains it all perfectly in her introduction.

Cultural Capital
London, NO.
New York, NO
L.A., NO
Leeds

Cultural Capital. Who and where holds cultural capital? I was born and raised in Leeds and it always seemed like it was elsewhere, well certainly funding has gone elsewhere.
I found these two photo boxes underneath the bed when visiting home for Christmas. The pictures were mainly taken around 1984, during the Miners’ Strike and Thatcher years, of which parts of the North have still not recovered from.

My mum, Melanie, happened to turn 18 that year – alongside many of her friends.

In my childhood, I remember coming downstairs on weekend mornings or home to a room full of laughter and at least three of my mum’s friends sitting and chatting. Squeezed in between long work weeks were Sunday dinners
and Saturday nights out. I grew up with the notion that your female friends got you through all decades of your life. It was nice to find images from years before I was born and see not much has changed. My mum has always loved her friends and a good night out. – Victoria P Gill

We kept the title from the first exchange of emails. MELANIE & THE MINERS’ STRIKE. Of course the book has everything and nothing to do with the miners’ strike. No more than Victoria so perfectly expresses it. The pictures speak for themselves. The pictures speak for Melanie and the people in them. This was not a time of camera phones and Melanie and her friends were not at university or art school, they were born in Leeds and left school and worked in Leeds. These pictures were taken with no motive, but just simply Melanie and her mates on their average weekends. We are fortunate that Melanie took these photographs and that Victoria found them and recognised something special in them.

And then Victoria sat down with Melanie and her friends Jane, Rebecca and Annette (all appear in the book). Snippets from their conversations about the images are added as captions to some but not all pages... they are wonderful.