Hollow Victory

Maureen Cooke is an ordinary teenager growing up in the 1960's - not that it's particularly swinging when you live above a pub on the Thames estuary. OK, Gravesend might not have the same ring to it as the King's Road, but at least you can dream... The only child of Cyril and Florrie Cooke, esteemed landlord and landlady of The Victory, Maureen spends her formative years amid the smoke and clamour of a typical 'local', mixing with colourful characters for whom the miniskirt, free love, psychedelia and 'immigrants' are about as welcome as a wet summer. But Cyril and Florrie are workaholics and have little time for their daughter. Instead Nanna Dot and Grandad Bert bring her up as if she was their own child. Maureen loves them too - as if they were her own parents. So why hadn't her real parents made her feel that way? When you're a young woman desperate to get out, meet boys and have fun, being cooped up feels like a life sentence. Just as you think Maureen can never escape, something happens that convinces her she has to go. But will she succeed? Hollow Victory tells it as it is - or was, forty-odd years ago when young people were taking over the world and the 'older generation' watched from the side lines in bemused silence.