The Button Box cover art

The Button Box

Lifting the Lid on Women's Lives

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The Button Box

By: Lynn Knight
Narrated by: Patience Tomlinson
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About this listen

I used to love the rattle and whoosh of my grandma's buttons as they scattered from their Quality Street tin.

An inlaid wooden chest the size of a shoe box holds Lynn Knight's button collection. A collection that has been passed down through three generations of women: a chunky '60s-era toggle from a favourite coat, three tiny pearl buttons from her mother's first dress after she was adopted as a baby, a jet button from a time of Victorian mourning. Each button tells a story.

'They change our view of the world and the world's view of us', said Virginia Woolf of clothes. The Button Box traces the story of women at home and in work from pre-First World War domesticity through the first clerical girls in silk blouses to the delights of beading and glamour in the '30s to short skirts and sexual liberation in the '60s.

©2016 Lynn Knight (P)2016 Random House AudioBooks 20th Century Art Gender Studies Historical Modern Social Sciences Women

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All stars
Most relevant
Well read with an appropriate voice, but the writing & content aren't what I hoped for. It mixes women's social history with the author's personal family stories which is engaging in places... but unfortunately it quite often verges into a detailed list of "clothes I have owned, with information about where and when I brought them." These bits are still in the extreme, akin to listening to a stranger's shopping list. a good editor might have saved it, but alas!

A patchwork of pieces, some better than others

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As a Seamstress myself, whom also played with my grandmothers button tin & my mothers, & weighing them out on my tiny postoffice scales, or transporting them in the trucks of my brothers hornby trains, i absolutly loved this book.

Fabulous Read bringing back childhood Memories

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I shall be listening to this again it so much more than buttons. The history of women's lives across the generations is thought provoking, so much I'd not heard of but also reminders of things my mom and nan have told me. The outrageous expections that women through the years have had to put up with and yet much has not changed. Yes more women have top jobs but the idea of equality still has a long way to go.

Women's history

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I enjoyed this book. A historical count of women and fashion without being boring. The narrative takes you through the history of women who made and designed fashion and clothing. Taking you through the various decades.

A great book

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I absolutely loved this book and listened to every chapter three times. VERY much enjoyed how it spills over with memories of every woman’s childhood, and a richly told social history of women’s lives through the past couple of centuries.

A beautiful, entrancing gem of a book

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