Nellie's Book : The Early Life of Victoria Wood's Mother

My mother was a very intelligent and forceful person, a natural writer, who, having left school at 14, put herself through college and university later in life after bringing up four children. I''d have been quite happy if she had gone to university earlier and not bothered bringing me up at all. She didn''t talk much about her early life, just the odd fascinating snippet, like my father leaving the scene of her wedding and heading back to his mother ...she was too busy for long conversations - she had mad cross hovering to do, and bonkers journeys in her Austin van, looking for bits of timber she could liberate from bomb sites, or bargains like the sack of shoe lasts that sat in our shed for thirty years. I hope you find this account of her early life interesting - most of it will be news to me!'' - Victoria Wood

Nellie Mape met Stanley Wood ''at about 4.30p.m.'' on Boxing Day, 1937. She was 18, a steelworks progress-chaser who had dreams of romantic love. He was 25, an insurance claims inspector and part-time musician with ambitions to be a successful writer. Their union produced, four children, the youngest of whom is comic performer, writer actress, singer and producer Victoria Wood. Nellie died in 2001, but in the later years of her life she wrote a warm, and often funny, account of her childhood, growing up in Manchester between 1919 and 1933. This is it, affectionately known in the family as Nellie''s Book, edited by her eldest son Chris and with a foreword by her youngest daughter Victoria.