Publisher's Synopsis
Erin Pizzey's name is known throughout Britain and many other parts of the world as that of the courageous and indomitable champion of battered women. In the past year, her refuge in London has given shelter to more than a thousand women from all parts of the country. Her refusal to say no to women in need has brought her into constant conflict with the authorities, but in her view the simple rightness of her cause has always justified her defiance. Her work with these women is well known; what is not so familiar is the fascinating and in some ways horrifying story she now tells of her own childhood. Not surprisingly, she was a difficult child. One of twin daughters of a peripatetic diplomatic family, Erin was almost literally reared in a trunk, and her childhood tracks criss-crossed the world. Her highly-strung, luxury-loving mother and her obsessed, tyrannical father were always quarrelling, and the young Erin grew up in a strained atmosphere of loveless neglect. Her own spirit and resourcefulness meant that she was always in trouble both at home and at school. Erin Pizzey tells the revealing and often painfully funny story of her childhood with courage and great candour. She draws the conclusion, inevitable from her own history, that violence in childhood, whether mental or physical, will lead to violence later. From her own experience she has learned how to offer strength and support to thousands of women with whose battering by life she can only too readily identify.
