A Daughter's Tale

At ninety years old, Mary Soames is the only surviving child of Winston and Clementine Churchill. A Daughters Tale follows her early life from an idyllic childhood in her own Garden of Eden at Chartwell to her ATS service in mixed anti-aircraft batteries during the war. With glimpses into her fascinating personal diary, published here for the first time, she draws us into a world where the experiences of a packed family, social and romantic life unfold against a background of cataclysmic events. When Chamberlains declaration of war in 1939 shatters Marys world, she begins to share the anxieties and stresses suffered by her family through her fathers position. The mutual love between Mary and her parents is evident on every page, from her Chartwell years to Winstons defeat at the 1945 general election, when she recounts her own devastation on her fathers behalf. As she meets her future husband Christopher Soames at the end of this charming memoir, it is clear that, at twenty-four, Mary has lived a full life and is well prepared for her future as wife and mother.