Writing her memoirs was a therapeutic experience for amateur actress Sheila Hansford, helping her to make peace with her abusive grandmother.

Mrs Hansford, 76, of Orchard Way in North Bradley, Trowbridge, spent three months working on the first part of her life story, from a wartime childhood in Southampton to living with grandparents and a Quaker children’s home following her parents’ deaths.

She said: “Everybody I spoke to about my childhood said, ‘Why don’t you write about it?’ It was very therapeutic. I have always written travel memoirs, but I’ve never done anything like this.”

A keen playwright and actress, she came to Trowbridge with husband Kenneth in 1965 and has been a regular with the Trowbridge Players.

It’s a Hard Knock Life is on sale at Devizes Books.