Monica

Graham Loveluck-Edwards

Monica tells the incredible back story of a 60’s fashion icon. It charts the movements of her family who fled Poland to escape war but instead ended up in German Occupied France. Some of the men escaped and joined the Polish Free Army to fight alongside the British and ended up settling in South Wales. Meanwhile the women tried to maintain a semblance of normality for the children before they were to meet up again. The real stories and histories in this book are told from the perspective of the youngest member of the family at its heart. Her name? That varies according to where you know her from. At home with the Polish family she was called Monia. To her friends in school she was Monique. And when she came to Britain, everyone knew her as Monica. Her character is based on a real person who, as you will discover, had accomplished incredible things despite all the barriers life can throw at a little girl from a working class family of coal miners in war time. This book is a social history. It looks at the impact of war, the pace of change in the 20th Century, it asks questions of identity, of class, of the role of family, religion and politics and how they have changed down the last two generations so dramatically. It covers the Polish contribution to World War II and what post war South Wales was like.