> llewellyn

"Each family, however modest its origin, possesses its own particular tale of the past—a tale which can bewitch us with as great a sense of insistent romance as can ever the tradition of kings."— Llewellyn Powys. The M.I.L.K. project was conceived to honour what it is to be part of a family. Look at the men, women and children on these pages. In their faces you will recognise yourself and your loved ones, for you, too, are a member of the great kinship that is the human family. As James McBride writes, "without family, we are all a tribe of nomads, cut adrift, disconnected, wandering the earth with neither time nor place nor history to give our aching souls a home." Family is a universal homecoming, a commemoration of the human spirit itself.

Life in the Fifteen Streets was tough - a continual struggle for survival. Some families gave up and descended into a dismal state of grinding poverty. Others, like the O'Briens - and especially John O'Brien - fought grimly for a world they were only rarely allowed to glimpse.John O'Brien caught his 'glimpse' on the day he met Mary Llewellyn. Mary, with her slim body and soft brown hair; Mary, who lived well, had beautiful clothes - who worked because she wanted to, not because she had to ...When John O'Brien fell in love with Mary Llewellyn, he knew there was a gulf between them that nothing could bridge - it was the gulf of the Fifteen Streets.