Passage Across the Mersey

The remarkable story of Helen Forrester, author of Twopence to Cross the Mersey, and how she turned tragedy to triumph.

When Helen Forrester’s father went bankrupt in the 1930’s, she and her six siblings fell from a comfortable middle-class existence into wretched poverty. Later in life, Helen wrote a ground-breaking series of memoirs, starting with Twopence to Cross the Mersey, which told the harrowing account of her family’s struggles in Depression-era Liverpool. It was a story filled with tragedy and small triumphs but many readers wondered what happened to Helen when she grew up; what became of the fragile young girl who had so much responsibility heaped on her shoulders?

Now for the first time, her son Robert recounts the unexpected life that Helen went on to live; of the remarkable love story with a young man from a background a million miles away from everything a Lancashire Lass like Helen would have known and of the astonishing lengths she went to in order to achieve happiness. Full of new revelations and fascinating detail never before revealed, Passage Across the Mersey is a story of an extraordinary woman, and of the journey that took her thousands of miles from the place she called home…

Reviews

Praise for Helen Forrester:
‘It was the biography that I would have written if my parents had not been given benefits, if they’d had to rely on parish hand outs … [I] want to press this book into your hands and go, “You must read this”.’ Caitlin Moran

‘Remarkable that from so bleak and unloving a background came a writer of such affectionate understanding and unsettling honesty’ Sunday Telegraph

‘What makes this writer’s self-told tale so memorable?… An absolute recall, a genius for the unforgettable detail, the rare chance of subject’
The Good Book Guide

'Should be long and widely read as an extraordinary human story and social document' Observer

About the author

Robert Bhatia is Helen Forrester's only child. As a boy, he lived on Merseyside for a time and attended school where he learned to dance the Twist to the music of the Beatles. Thereafter, he developed a keen interest in, and appreciation for, English culture and history. Trained as an economist, he became a senior civil servant in Alberta, Canada. He and his wife live in Edmonton, as do their two adult children.