These are the autobiographical tales of George Hewins (the "Dillen"), a Warwickshire labourer of the era before the Great War, and his daughter Mary, a Stratford factory worker in the 1930s and '40s. Told in their own voices to Angela Hewins - George's grandson's wife - their extraordinary and moving stories are records of a life as it was really lived by men and women who, until recently, had no history they could call their own.