The author's father was a pharmacist and ran various chemist's shops from the Potteries to Basingstoke - albeit not always his own. The Blackwells were thus firmly middle class; but the Depression of the 1930s nearly lost them everything. A retrenchment move to the Midlands of John's early years took him to a school in Leicester where he was bullied, and a home where he was also bullied for a while - by his father, who longed for his son to succeed where he had seemingly failed. Good husbandry and a sensible attitude to work saved the day for the family, and from the B-stream John toiled...