The Sugar Girls

Tales of Hardship, Love and Happiness in Tate & Lyle’s East End

By: Duncan Barrett, Nuala Calvi

Narrated by: Penny McDonald

Tales of Hardship, Love and Happiness in Tate & Lyle’s East End Factories. The Sugar Girls went straight to No.10 in the Sunday Times Bestseller List, spending five weeks in the top ten.

‘On an autumn day in 1944, Ethel Alleyne walked the short distance from her house to Tate & Lyle’s refinery on the shining curve of the Thames. Looking up at the giant gates, Ethel felt like she had been preparing for this moment all her life. She smoothed down her frizzy hair, scraped a bit of dirt off the corner of her shoe and strode through.

She was quite unprepared for the sight that met her eyes …’

In the years leading up to and after the Second World War thousands of women left school at fourteen to work in the bustling factories of London’s East End. Despite long hours, hard and often hazardous work, factory life afforded exciting opportunities for independence, friendship and romance. Of all the factories that lined the docks, it was at Tate & Lyle’s where you could earn the most generous wages and enjoy the best social life, and it was here where The Sugar Girls worked.

Through the Blitz and on through the years of rationing The Sugar Girls kept Britain sweet. The work was back-breakingly hard, but Tate & Lyle was more than just a factory, it was a community, a calling, a place of love and support and an uproarious, tribal part of the East End. From young Ethel to love-worn Lillian, irrepressible Gladys to Miss Smith who tries to keep a workforce of flirtatious young men and women on the straight and narrow, this is an evocative, moving story of hunger, hardship and happiness.

Tales of adversity, resilience and youthful high spirits are woven together to provide a moving insight into a lost way of life, as well as a timeless testament to the experience of being young and female.

©2012 Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi (P)2012 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

An authoritative and highly readable work of social history which brings vividly to life a fascinating part of East End life before it is lost forever.’ Melanie McGrath

‘Delightful, a terrific piece of nonfiction storytelling, and an authoritative and highly readable work of social history which brings vividly to life a fascinating part of East End life before it is lost forever.’ – Melanie McGrath, bestselling author of Silvertown and Hopping

‘This vivid and richly readable account of women’s lives in and around the Tate & Lyle East London works in the Forties and Fifties is written as popular social history, played for entertainment. If it doesn’t become a TV series to rival Call The Midwife, I’ll take my tea with ten sugars.’ Bel Mooney, Daily Mail

Great non-fiction book.

Focuses on the lives of several young women who all worked at a London sugar factory in the 1940’s and follows them through their lives. Even though there is loss and distress, especially during the war years, this is generally a feel-good book. Highly recommend.

An ifascinating snaoshot

A snapshot of a lifestyle now gone. The individual stories snd characters are lifelike and make you feel as if you have stepped into another time and really experienced their joys snd troubles both at work and in their personal life. I found the details about the running of the factory one of the best parts of the book - so different from the way things are done now.

If you like Call The Midwife

This story centers around the lives of the girls and women that worked in the sugar plant in London mainly during world war 2. I love it and it fits right in perfectly with the time spans of Call the Midwife. the characters are well developed and you fall in love with them and enjoy reading about their lives and loves. Highly recommend this tale for anyone that loves British history.