Tower and Town, September 2024 (view the full edition)Ysenda Maxtone Graham - Jobs for the GirlsA word of advice to all you trainee air hostesses out there: if a pilot (male, of course) comes knocking on your hotel door asking for toothpaste, don't open the door. Squeeze the toothpaste through the keyhole. Welcome to the world of women's work from 1950 to the early 1990s, a heady mix of cardigans, pearls, smoking in the office and - trigger warning - bottom-pinching. Jobs for the Girls: How We Set Out to Work in the Typewriter Age is the third in Ysenda Maxtone Graham's trilogy that began with the bestselling British Summer Time Begins and continued with Terms & Conditions, which looked back at school holidays of yore and life in girls' boarding schools respectively. Maxtone Graham draws on the testimonies of more than 200 mostly middle- and upper-class "girls" - featured names include Bumble Ogilvy-Wedderburn - to paint a picture of working life that was often just a prelude to the main event: marriage to a man of means. So if you want to learn about - or remind yourself of - what it was like to wear an apron, have an inkwell thrown at your head, send a fax or apply for a "Girl Friday" job in the Crème de la Crème section of the Times' Sits Vac column, Maxtone Graham is the LitFest speaker for you. Avoid flying inkwells with Ysenda Maxtone Graham in St Mary's Church Hall at 11.30am on Saturday 28th 
Credit Joseph Sevier 
Ben Tarring |