Edward Hunt's Forest of Dean Miscellany

On 21st March 2009, Winifred Foley died aged 94. Born Winifred Mary Mason, in the village of Brierley, her beautiful and truthful autobiographical books evoke life in and out of the Forest of Dean in the last century. She was the Forest of Dean's Flora Thompson. In "A Child in the Forest", she spoke with an authentic voice about the hardships and joys of being brought up in the Forest of Dean in the twenties. Her father was a miner and was not allowed to work for seven years due to his role as a leader in the General Strike of 1926. This experience, and the terrible impoverishment she had known, fostered her lifelong socialist views which she shared with her husband Syd Foley.