Shop on Wheels

Description

Janet Becker was a pioneer woman conserver of church monuments, a historian, novelist and poet.  Her home was in East Suffolk from the age of ten.  This diary describes, with a lightness of touch and humour, but recognition of tragedy, how she supported the servicemen at a searchlight battery near her village.  She attached a trailer to her bicycle and carried necessities for sale, special treats such as cakes and hand-made valentines, and clothing that the women of the village had repaired.

Janet Becker was born in London in 1903. In 1913 she had come to live in the Suffolk village of Wenhaston with her artist father Harry Becker, and her mother Georgina. She was a pioneer woman professional restorer and cleaner of church monuments, and from the early 1930s she travelled widely , but always returning to Suffolk.  Her first published book was on the medieval accounts of Rochester Bridge and she went on to write two historical studies, two novels, a volume of verse and some shorter works.  Janet died of leukaemia in 1953.

Her wartime diaries have now been edited and put into print for the first time by Alan Mackley, who first came to Suffolk as a wartime evacuee.  He has written widely about the building of country houses, East Anglian history and the village where he has lived for over 45 years.