This is the story of life in London's Fulham through the eyes of a boy from his early years from 10 to the age of 18, when he left home for the first time to do his National Service. It is a series of portraits about post-war London and blossoming adolescence and chronicles the author’s first stirring of sexuality, the raucous clamour of the working-class market in North End Road, the awesome impact of the Festival of Britain in 1951, the Bohemian eccentricities of a London grammar school in Chelsea and the effect of air raids in the last stage of the war. It recalls ration-book shortages and a sense of wild optimism for the future featured in those early post-war years. Fulham in particular and London in general was far from being the 'Swinging Capital' of the sixties, but more the dangling city of the bruised and austere forties and fifties.
