The Men In My Life
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: First ed.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: Previous. bookshop owner stamp on FEP.
A shocking memoir that pulls back the curtain on the hidden underbelly of mid-twentieth-century London, The Men in My Life is the unflinching autobiography of Marthe Watts, a French woman who became one of the most notorious figures in London's postwar vice trade. Watts chronicles her extraordinary and turbulent life — from her origins in France to her entanglement with the Messina brothers, the Maltese gangsters who dominated London's prostitution rackets — with a candour that is as disarming as it is revelatory. Published by Christopher Johnson of London, this memoir stands as a remarkable primary document of a world rarely illuminated with such personal honesty, capturing the desperation, manipulation, and resilience that defined one woman's survival in the shadows of a glamorous but brutal era. Watts illustrates the power dynamics and exploitation that underpinned the lives of countless women in postwar Britain, while her voice — raw, direct, and surprisingly assured — gives testimony to a history that polite society preferred to ignore. For anyone drawn to the intersection of true crime, social history, and personal memoir, this book poses a question that lingers long after the final page: how does a woman reclaim her own story from the men who sought to own it?
Author: Marthe Watts
Format: Hardback
Published: 1960, Christopher Johnson, London
Genre: Biography
Edition: First ed.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: Previous. bookshop owner stamp on FEP.
A shocking memoir that pulls back the curtain on the hidden underbelly of mid-twentieth-century London, The Men in My Life is the unflinching autobiography of Marthe Watts, a French woman who became one of the most notorious figures in London's postwar vice trade. Watts chronicles her extraordinary and turbulent life — from her origins in France to her entanglement with the Messina brothers, the Maltese gangsters who dominated London's prostitution rackets — with a candour that is as disarming as it is revelatory. Published by Christopher Johnson of London, this memoir stands as a remarkable primary document of a world rarely illuminated with such personal honesty, capturing the desperation, manipulation, and resilience that defined one woman's survival in the shadows of a glamorous but brutal era. Watts illustrates the power dynamics and exploitation that underpinned the lives of countless women in postwar Britain, while her voice — raw, direct, and surprisingly assured — gives testimony to a history that polite society preferred to ignore. For anyone drawn to the intersection of true crime, social history, and personal memoir, this book poses a question that lingers long after the final page: how does a woman reclaim her own story from the men who sought to own it?