DOLL & MANDY

Despina and Lambros met in their teens in Palmers Green, North London. They married in 1963, bonded by their childhoods in Cyprus and a work ethic stunted by high unemployment and civil unrest at home. They began a business making ‘Barbarella’ style clothes and ‘within a couple of years had a Merc and two houses’. In 1973 they returned to Kyrenia with their three kids. It was short-lived. Turkey invaded and hundreds of thousands of Greek Cypriots were displaced from the north of the island. The family fled to London. Aged four Mandy still spoke no English, she felt neither Cypriot nor British. At aged nine she left her small north London school for the last time, her parents were emigrating again. On her last day Mrs London, her Jamaican headmistress, gave her this doll as a farewell gift. Mandy returned to London in 1990. Of her British Cypriot identity she says the city ‘has given me the opportunity to lose both and hang onto both.’

16 Jun 2013