What's Next‪?‬

Nancy Vlasto has led an extraordinary life. Born to a famous surgeon in the roaring ’20s, she began life in a comfortable Bayswater home complete with servants. By age nine, she was starring in a Pathé newsreel as a young tennis star. But by the outbreak of WWII, the feisty young Nancy had chosen to swap a world of privilege for ‘a life well lived’. As Nazi bombs rained down on London, she  in a children’s hospital, bravely staying above ground with little ones too sick to take to the shelters. Later, she worked as a midwife and district nurse amid the postwar   poverty of the East End.      


But the irrepressible Nancy always found time for fun – from wartime parties to going naked in the Turkish baths at Paddington. And by the ’50s she had discovered a taste for performing. She made TV appearances before heading to Canada in search of fresh adventures – ending up running her own hugely popular radio programme for children. Back home, Nancy turned her talents to a career as a health visitor before she eventually became the deputy headteacher of a special school. Now – well into her 80s – she continues a lifetime of fundraising dressed as ‘Blossom’ the panto-style horse. She’s taken tea with The Queen, enjoyed many honours from grateful colleagues and organisations and nurtured a lifelong love of music and singing.     


Here Nancy shares a wealth of memorable stories from every exciting  episode of her life, bringing each era vividly to life. She shares the sometimes moving, often funny and always illuminating characters and scrapes she has enjoyed along the way. This hugely enjoyable memoir brings Nancy’s adventures to life – showing what life was like for an indefatigable working woman across more than seven decades. Nancy has never lost the thrill of wondering what life can offer her. She celebrated her 80th birthday by swimming with dolphins and is still asking. . . what’s next?