Across the Water
Irish Women's Lives in Britain *
Mary Lennon, Marie McAdam and Joanne O'Brien

Oral testimonies, portraits and picture essays. At times during the 20th century more Irish women than men came to live in Britain. Yet this unusual emigration pattern has gone largely unnoticed and the range of these women’s lives unexplored. Challenging that neglect, the three authors spent several years interviewing and photographing Irish women of different ages, and from many parts of Ireland, who have all lived in Britain.

The result is a unique collection of oral testimonies and photographs. Some women tell their life stories; others focus on specific themes: the experience of arriving in Britain, finding work and accommodation, feelings about Irish identity, the influences of politics and religion and responses to racism.

While these testimonies draw out experiences which many Irish women have in common, the situations described are immensely varied: from working as a chambermaid in the 1930s to teaching in a multicultural school in the 1980s; arriving during the blackout in wartime England to facing ‘No Irish No Coloureds’ notices in the 1960s; raising children across two cultures to being a second-generation Irish woman – a London-born punk in the 1970s.

Accompanied by stunning photographs, this book effectively overturns stereotypical notions of the Irish, and voices the unrecognised experiences of Irish women in Britain by exploring the ‘resounding silence waiting to be filled’.

* To obtain a copy please go to www.abebooks.co.uk