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Home > Romani Studies > Our Forgotten Years
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Our Forgotten Years

A Gypsy woman’s life on the road

Author: Maggie Smith-Bendell

Price: see vendor

"

“Maggie's book is a lovely insight into a travelling gal's life in a time when life was more free. It made me want to hitch up a pony and hit the open road.”

-David Essex,

About the book

“Our Forgotten Years is passionate, exhilarating and despairing. A rich work of high literature, a portrait of Travelling through the years. The heartache of constantly being moved on. I particularly identified with the war years and my childhood: it was so true to life. An excellent book, Maggie. Congratulations.” Billy Wood, Travellers' Times

Maggie Smith-Bendell was born on the edge of a pea field near Bridgwater in Somerset in 1941. She and her family are Romani Gypsies and as she grew up Maggie learned the old crafts and customs of the Gypsies' traditional way of life.

Her family travelled the length and breadth of the countryside, eking a living from the woods and hedgerows, catching rabbits, pheasants and wild duck. They did all manner of fieldwork for farmers including picking peas, beans and hops – and as soon as Maggie was old enough she contributed to the family's labour.

Ever since they arrived in Europe centuries ago, the Gypsies have been persecuted for their outsider status, but the last sixty years or so have perhaps seen the greatest threats to their culture, to the extent that their traditional way of life is in danger of disappearing altogether: changes in the law, changes in agriculture, many things have undermined the Gypsies' freedom to live as they wish.

  • More about the book

    In this wonderful memoir, full of the language and lore of the Gypsies, Maggie Smith-Bendell gives us a true insight into a way of life that has more or less vanished: driven by the seasons, with an extraordinary closeness to nature, she and her family faced numerous hardships including the deaths of beloved family members.

    As well as telling the story of her family's ups and downs in the course of their yearly journeys to the pea-fields of Somerset and the hop-gardens of Herefordshire, Maggie recounts her own journey to become a prominent campaigner for Gypsy rights.

    An autobiography told straight from the heart, Our Forgotten Years is both moving and inspiring.

  • View the table of contents

    Contents


    1My Family1
    2A Fearful Winter5
    3The War Years16
    4Snowdrop Woods21
    5Wild Daffodils34
    6The Old Granny40
    7The Swine's Jump Road47
    8Pea-Picking Time52
    9The Prince Lane62
    10Dad's Magic Flowers67
    11The Hop Gardens71
    12Lenard's Dilemma78
    13School Days86
    14The Squatters' Hut93
    15On the Road Again101
    16Death in the Family106
    17Saying Farewell113
    18Little Jess119
    19On to Devonshire129
    20A Family Reunion137
    21Village Life144
    22Planning Permission152
    23Growing Up157
    24A New Life169
    25Romani Rights181
    26The ‘Land Grab’186
    27Organising Change192
    28The Work Goes On199
    29Our Forgotten Years206
       
     Photo Album209
       
     Postscripts 
     Culture, Customs and Traditions221
     Romani Cooking225
     Traditional Romani Crafts232
     Wagon Songs236
     Common Romani Words238

  • About the Author/s:

    Maggie Smith-Bendell

    Maggie Smith-Bendell describes herself as “privileged to be born in the era of the wagon and horse to good old-fashioned Romani Gypsy parents”.

    She is immensely proud of her heritage and believes it was her early life that made her what she is today, an “activist for my race of Gypsy people”.

    She campaigns tirelessly for the rights of Gypsies to live peacefully in accordance with their culture, and was awarded a British Empire Medal for her work in this area in the 2012 Queen's Birthday Honours list.

ISBN: 978-1-902806-91-4 Format: Paperback, 256pp Published: Nov 2009

Other titles you may enjoy

Big Louie and Me
Big Louie and Me
The Roads of the Roma
The Roads of the Roma
We are the Romani People
We are the Romani People
Smoke in the Lanes
Smoke in the Lanes

Any questions

Contact us at UH Press if you have any queries or would like to find out more about this book.

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