Nearly eight decades after her death, Marie Lloyd remains one of the most potent figures of twentieth-century popular culture. A giantess of the English music hall whose turbulent career spanned the Victorian and Edwardian ages and embraced the First World War, she epitomised the cheeky cockney vulgarity of those who trod the boards. A victim of domestic violence, a performer who built her career on a well-tuned sense of innuendo and one of the first showbiz superstars, she is an essentially modern figure - now for the first time the subject of a modern biography. 'Her life reads like a script 'EastEnders' hacks would die for: family feuds tied to connections with the Turf, pugilists, royal scandals and the bank scam of the century ...research and lovely writing resurrects the memory of a big-hearted trouper ...A cracking book, well-used pictures, pick it up and laugh and cry. Midge Gillies tops the bill' Time Out