Housewives' Choice

The Hints and Hobbies series enriched and enlightened 1920s cinemagoers with its inimitable brand of advice that we can only hope few actually tried at home. Here, their bizarre household tips include ironing ties with the aid of a jam jar to cleaning mink stoles courtesy of a handful of bran.

A no-nonsense ‘countrywoman’ demonstrates the finer points of rabbit pie-making.

Dedicated to ‘the housewives of Britain’, this film follows a day in the wartime life of ‘Mother’, an everywoman whose dutiful service is of the domestic kind. Tragically, this was the final film made by director Ruby Grierson, who died in 1940 when the liner on which she was shooting a documentary was torpedoed.

Greedy Mrs Wilson (the wonderful Irene Handl) discovers that buying black market meat is deeply unpatriotic. From the writer/director team behind The Belles of St Trinian’s.

The copper kettle’s boiling in the inglenook and there’s bread and butter and strawberry jam at the ready. The ritual of afternoon tea as enjoyed by a middle-aged couple.

Welcome to a world with no running water and buckets for toilets. Working-class women from London, Derby, Northamptonshire and South Wales reveal the dire conditions in which they have to live and carry out their chores.

After a terse encounter with her husband, grumpy housewife Jennifer visits the doctor to find the root of her problem, which turns out to be her poor sleeping patterns. Fortunately, help is at hand in the form of a certain malted hot drink.

Discover the joys of shopping at Harrods and some of its more surprising lines. Our guide is Elizabeth Allan, 1950s TV superstar and glamorous doyenne of What’s My Line?

From Norwich to Manchester, Durham to Scotland’s west coast, housewives take a rare moment of ‘me’ time and find a rest cure in Britain’s galleries, cathedrals and countryside (except the woman who hauntingly decides to hike in a pair of high heels).

Produced by British Transport Films.