Winifred Foley, the daughter of Charles Mason, a coal miner and his Welsh wife Margaret, was born in
Brierley, Gloucestershire. Her book,
A Child in the Forest (1974), mainly an account of her childhood in the
Forest of Dean, also includes her experiences as an adolescent
domestic servant in London and elsewhere, up to the point where she meets her future husband, Sydney (died 1998), at an
anti-fascist rally in 1936. The book has been compared with
Laurie Lee's
Cider with Rosie, but there are some differences, e.g. Foley makes clear the grinding poverty of her childhood. Its success was somewhat disconcerting for her: "I think I come out of it as a very ordinary little girl, with all the usual faults," she said. "I wouldn't have been surprised, after it had been published, if decent people hadn't wanted to know me." Her immediate family were delighted with the book, but "the honesty of her descriptions, which included stories of
fleas in the bed and poor sanitation, shamed some parts of her family."
A Child in the Forest was serialised on
BBC Radio 4's ''
Woman's Hour in 1973, and three years later one chapter from it, about a job as a domestic servant, was adapted as a TV programme, Abide With Me''. A stage adaptation of the book, by David Goodland, was produced at the
Swan Theatre, Worcester in 1989 and the
Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham in 1991. The success of the book allowed the Foleys to move from
Huntley and buy a house at
Cliffords Mesne, near
Newent, Gloucestershire. Subsequent works of reminiscences included
No Pipe Dreams for Father,
Back to the Forest and
In and Out of the Forest. She also had some romantic fiction published. Writing fiction in her old age, she said, was "the only thing that keeps me going." She moved to
Cheltenham after her husband died. According to her eldest son Chris, Winifred Foley "never lost her love of the Forest, even when she moved. My mother had a very political mind and talked about a lot of things, but she never talked about anything with more affection than her days in the Forest." A documentary on her life,
Winifred Foley – A Child from the Forest, was broadcast on
ITV in 2001. ==Death and legacy==