Jean Baggott - The Girl on the Wall: One Lifes Rich Tapestry

The street in which I was born, with a description of the houses, factories, people and working-class lives

The origin of the tapestry how the idea evolved from the ceiling in the billiard room

Door-to-door selling from handcarts and horses and carts

Personal family memories

What the bands music means to me

How we managed and how long the situation lasted

The entertainment that could be derived from a ball of whitewash and a tin of wallop

World events and social and personal history in this ten-year period

The advertising of items that were not for sale during the war and the bare-faced lies that were used to sell goods after it, before new laws were passed

From 1940 to the Tet Offensive, the end of the Cold War and the wars that followed

Simple family fun in another age

How this phenomenon developed into the multimillion-pound industry it is today

A local concert party

A vast piece of land containing a derelict engine house, a large pond, a brick works, several pit holes, a brook and slag heaps

How we managed without clocks, telephones, cars and all the technology that we have today

There was a murderer hanged every fortnight on average

The people I have admired from my lifetime

Various things that have caused a stir and then disappeared such as the Rubiks cube, the hula hoop and the mini-skirt

In wartime and beyond including one which shows how the working class could deal with problems

The importance of this medium as entertainment when there was little else

A remarkable example

Anything would be tried before you bothered the doctor

Having fun which cost nothing

Of valour and murder, as related by our parents

Scraps of advice which I still bandy about today

A small room with a lot to tell

What the films mean to me

An example of enterprise

How we used them

A village on Southampton Water: deals with the Suez Crisis in 1956

Since Foxhunter we do much better these days

A system that had a lot going for it

A fact of life then and now

The problems of 1947, thunderstorms and summer days when a bunch of small children had nothing to fear

How washing was a whole days work; and the joys of taking things to the cleaners

In changing times

Roughly covering 1941 to the present day and the consequences of Butlers Education Act of 1944

Those who came and went and those who stayed

I could not have written this book without him

I could not write about one without including the other

Apollo 11 and the iron curtain

Days out that didnt always go to plan

How to repair a shoe with an old car tyre and make a bum freezer

World events, social and personal history in this ten-year period

World events, social and personal history in this ten-year period

When youre down in the dumps and feeling all alone

The trials and tribulations of family weekends and the ways in which this day has changed

From Nineteen Eighty-Four to Big Brother

Taking shelter during threatened air raids under the stairs and the Morrison shelter and in the church hall

A sorry story of what victory was like for some

At last finding what I hadnt realised was so important to me

Extreme tragedies caused by weapons, storms and acts of terrorism

Even we did not escape from the influx of American servicemen and why my nose still twitches

The importance of Muhammad Ali to the civil rights movement

World events, social and personal history in this ten-year period

World events, social and personal history in this ten-year period

How the cinema and its audience have changed in the last 60 years

World events, social and personal history in this ten-year period

The trauma of childhood illness

Watching the liners and other major ships going to and from the docks, including Forrestal

My observations of important aircraft from the Lancaster to Concorde

You will have gathered by now that I am incapable of sitting with idle hands

Never trusted them, never will

World events, social and personal history from 2000 to 2006

From the Liberty bodice to Christmas pudding moulds

To Angela for her skill at keeping my memory bank open

and for inspired suggestions such as Z for Zaire; and to

Jim for giving me the rugby ball together with the benefit

of his vast knowledge of many things.

I first met Jean when she took one of my courses on twentieth-century American history, and was immediately impressed by her enthusiastic embrace of her subject. I admired Jeans willingness to participate in class discussions with students much younger than herself, as well as her love of music as evidenced by her iPod. Several discussions resulted and we discovered a shared love of various acts, including the magnificent Pink Floyd. Jean is a great conversationalist, and it also came to light that she had grown up during the 1940s in West Bromwich, a town which is often described in less than flattering terms.

Some time later Jean, rather tentatively, brought in her tapestry to show me. As she explained the autobiographical rationale behind her work, my eyes were drawn to the detail in each of the circles, and the story that they told. There was no doubt that this was something very special, something that demanded a wider audience. The visual representation of a life in this form was innovative and intriguing. However, it was the way that the circles captured the experience of an ordinary life in a period of such historical change that made the greatest impact. The circles mix the personal, social, cultural and political, avoiding a straight narrative in favour of a thematic representation of a life. And they reveal that the ordinary is quite frequently extraordinary; that it can contain imagination, courage, humour and personal discovery. In our celebrity-obsessed culture, this is something that is all too often forgotten; Jeans work serves as a timely reminder.