Family photos contradict mother's account of daughters' teen years

Zoe Williams found that family photographs assembled for her mother Gwen’s funeral contradicted the picture Gwen had long painted of her daughters’ teenage years in the mid-1980s to early 1990s. A photobooth shot in particular showed the three of them cramped together and smiling, undermining Gwen’s repeated line that they were “allergic” to her.

Gwen described things in broad brush strokes—“Zoe was delinquent, couldn’t get a word of sense out of her,” and “1986? That was the year Stacey was awful”—yet she was politically engaged at home, writing letters that began “Dear Pérez de Cuéllar…” and filling the kitchen with progressive posters. Williams lists homemade spoofs such as a “protest and survive” leaflet and a “Don’t Die of Tories” take on an HIV campaign; she says marches were seldom photographed because it was considered frivolous to treat them like sightseeing, and occasionally the Wandsworth Borough News provided the only record.

Photos sent by Gwen’s friends, Williams says, show a sunnier family reality than Gwen’s later recollections. The photobooth image suggests the smiles were genuine—though Williams allows her mother may have tried to bribe them, even if she “wasn’t a very bribey person.” Family snapshots, Williams writes, do not match the dramatic versions of their childhood she heard, and she adds, “I’m pretty sure we did notice the outbreak of the Iraq war, too.”

Key Topics

Culture, Zoe Williams, Iraq War, Greater London Council, Wandsworth Borough News, Gwen