A Spoonful of Sugar - Brenda Ashford

‘They say you can never truly love a child that is not your own, but that goes against every instinct that runs through me. For I have loved children born to other women all my life and every child that I have ever cared for, I’ve adored with all my heart. Many I would have laid down my life for, in fact on some memorable occasions when I Red to air raid shelters clutching my charges to my chest, I very nearly did.

Brenda is 91 years old and spent 62 years working as a Norland Nanny. Just like a real-life Mary Poppins, Brenda devoted her life to giving children the best possible start in life.

She began training at the Norland Institute in 1939 at the age of 18, shortly before war was declared. Brenda was determined to give the children in her care a wonderful childhood, regardless of the horrors that were unravelling on the continent, and when the blitz began, on their doorsteps.

This is a story from a time when nothing was taken for granted and life itself was in peril on a near-daily basis. But the war was also a time when people pulled together like never before or since, and it called upon Brenda to make sacrifices she’d never imagined having to make