The Sugar Girls

Book excerpt: In the years leading up to and after the Second World War thousands of women left school at fourteen to work in the bustling factories of London¡s East End. Through the Blitz and on through the years of rationing the 'Sugar Girls' kept Britain sweet. The work was back-breakingly hard, but Tate & Lyle was more than just a factory: it was a community, a calling, a place of love and support and an uproarious, tribal part of the East End. From young Ethel to love-worn Lilian, irrepressible Gladys to Miss Smith who tries to keep a workforce of flirtatious young men and women on the straight and narrow, this is an evocative, moving story of hunger, hardship and happiness.