Author's response
This is an excellent review that deals very fairly and thoroughly with my work. I should like to thank Sally Alexander most warmly for it. My only comment is that although the lives of the women in the book were hard and difficult as Sally suggests, if one hears their words, there is a life, strength and spirit there which has its own message and a different impact from the transcribed word. The respondents I was fortunate enough to interview were survivors and had been forged in the fire of very hard lives. They did not regard themselves as victims and I could not patronise them by promulgating this view.
