Book Review – Mrs Finnegan’s Guide to Love, Life & Laxatives by Bridget Whelan

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About the Book

Forget Everything You Thought You Knew About History’s Housekeepers…

Step into the extraordinary world of Mrs. Finnegan, Brighton’s sharp-witted housekeeper from the 1830s. More than just a servant, Mrs. Finnegan is a reservoir of timeless advice, ready to tackle dilemmas from heartache and hair washing to the tricky business of repelling a bed bug invasion.

This isn’t your average historical account. Painstakingly and begrudgingly edited by a “museum volunteer from Hell”, Mrs. Finnegan emerges from these pages as the Boudicca of the serving classes and an authority on (almost) everything.

Discover the force of nature that is Mrs. Finnegan. It’s possible that your life, and the way you look at history, will never be quite the same.

Format: Paperback (136 pages) Publisher: The Regency Town House Publication date: 20th July 2025 Genre: Historical Fiction, Humour

My Review

In her guide, Mrs. Finnegan, doyenne of housekeepers, dispenses practical advice and words of wisdom in her own inimitable style, complete with erratic use of CAPITAL letters. She’s never short of solutions to problems of the heart or the trials of running a household, which must come as good news to correspondents such as Ursula Uncertain, Desolate Dennis or Molly Mortified.

There were lots of things that made me chuckle such as Mrs. F’s love letter template, amendable for any situation, and her diplomatic suggestions for ways to say no without actually uttering the word.

And who would argue with her when she states, “It is my belief love is not blind, simply shortsighted. On marriage you acquire a pair of spectacles.”

However, it’s probably best to ignore most of Mrs. Finnegan’s home remedies and residents of Hove should attempt to shrug off her dismissive comments.

There are copious footnotes many of which are humorous but also impart fascinating historical detail.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of the author.

In three words: Amusing, witty, fascinating

About the Author

Bridget Whelan lectured at Goldsmiths College on non-fiction courses and taught fiction in adult and community education in London, Sussex, Ireland and Portugal. She has also been Writer in Residence on lottery-funded projects supporting the unemployed and low-waged. Her novel A Good Confession is set in 1960s London and she won a prize for a short story about 1930s Ireland.

Connect with Bridget

Website | X/Twitter

#WWWWednesday – 15th October 2025

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Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

What I’m Currently Reading

I’m reading Our London Lives from my NetGalley shelf, The Assassin of Verona from my TBR pile and I’m listening to the audiobook of Transcription.

Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey (Atlantic via NetGalley)

1979. In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away.

Over the decades their lives follow different paths, interweaving from time to time, often in one another’s sight, always on one another’s mind, yet rarely together.

Forty years on, Milly is clinging onto the only home she’s ever really known while Pip, haunted by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, traipses the streets of London and wrestles with the life of the recovering alcoholic. And between them, perhaps uncrossable, lies the unspoken span of their lives.

The Assassin of Verona by Benet Brandreth (Zaffre)

Venice, 1586. William Shakespeare is disguised as a steward to the English Ambassador. He and his friends Oldcastle and Hemminges possess a deadly secret: the names of the catholic spies in England who seek to destroy Queen Elizabeth. Before long the Pope’s agents will begin to close in on them and fleeing the city will be the players’ only option.

In Verona, Aemelia, the daughter of a Duke, is struggling to conceal her passionate affair with her cousin Valentine. But darker times lie ahead with the arrival of the sinister Father Thornhill who is determined to seek out any who don’t conform to the Pope’s ruthless agenda . . .

Events will converge in the forests around Verona as a multitude of plots are hatched and discovered, players fall in and out of love and disguises are adopted and then discarded. Will Shakespeare and his friends escape with their secrets – and their lives?

Transcription by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday)

In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathisers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past for ever.

Ten years later, now a producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.

What I’ve Just Read

Andropov’s Cuckoo by Owen Jones

Two girls, born thousands of miles apart in Kazakhstan and Japan just after World War II, meet and are like peas in a pod. They also get on like sisters and keep in touch for the rest of their lives.

However, one wants to help her battle-scarred country and the other wants to leave hers for the West. They dream up a daring, dangerous plan to achieve both goals, which Andropov, the chief of the Soviet KGB, is told about. He dubs it Operation Youriko and it is set in motion, but does it have even the remotest chance of success?

What I’ll Be Reading Next

The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami, trans. by Philip Gabriel (Vintage)

When a young man’s girlfriend vanishes, he sets his heart on finding the imaginary city where her true self lives. His search will lead him to take a job in a remote library with mysteries of its own.

When he finally makes it to the city, he finds his beloved working in a different library – a dream library. But she has no memory of their life together and, as the lines between reality and fantasy start to blur, he must decide what he’s willing to lose.