Maura Murphy was born 'chronically ugly and cross as a briar' into a poor rural homestead in 1920s Ireland. She left school at 14 and worked in service until she married. In the 1950s the family left Ireland for Birmingham, in the hope of finding a better life. At 75 years old, recovering from cancer and having left a marriage of 50 years, Maura recorded her story: her early days running wild in Ireland, her destructive marriage to a hard-working, hard-drinking womanizer, the birth of her nine children and a life-or-death choice that would change her for ever.