This Was My England

Few books evoke the private life of an era, as it was in England between 1935 and 1954, with such clarity, as this autobiography. And it is only through such an intimate memoir that the hidden aspects of an age - so often lost to future generations - may be revealed as social history.It comprises the "confession" of a prolific author, with all his thoughts and feelings, and no attempt to conceal his faults or failings. Whilst his happiest memories were as an evacuee at his grandparents' home in Wiltshire, his return to the dreaded London home brought brutal corporal punishment and periods of misery in a rigidly religious environment. But on being sent to a well-established boarding school, he went unknowingly from the frying pan to the fire, where he endured horrifying ritual torture and permanent physical injuries.He subsequently went to a North London public school, and although was never to be bullied again, was witness to, and partly implicated in anti-Semitism as a pre-teenager