A Toynbee to Remember

This book is based on 500 letters exchanged between Will and Lizzie Toynbee living in Walthamstow, East London, and their son Stan, who was in Egypt in during First World War. The family was well known in Walthamstow through their involvement in the Brotherhood Movement. Will was president of the Marsh Street Men's Own and Lizzie was president of the complementary Marsh Street Women's Own meetings, which had broken away from Marsh Street Congregational Church. By 1914, the movement had...
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This book is based on 500 letters exchanged between Will and Lizzie Toynbee living in Walthamstow, East London, and their son Stan, who was in Egypt in during First World War. The family was well known in Walthamstow through their involvement in the Brotherhood Movement. Will was president of the Marsh Street Men's Own and Lizzie was president of the complementary Marsh Street Women's Own meetings, which had broken away from Marsh Street Congregational Church. By 1914, the movement had grown from its beginnings in a West Bromwich Congregational Church in the Midlands to a mainly nonconformist membership throughout Britain of 1,200,000, shortly before the war broke out. By the time Stan Toynbee enlisted in the army early in 1915 when the correspondence began, Will was speaking all over the country on the government campaigns. This and Lizzie's experiences and feelings of Stan's absence so far away, form the basis of the 500 letters, which are the reason for the book.