I shouldn't have described our house. It was small, only two rooms and a kitchen, but I don't want to create the reaction that several people have had to This Boy  and have them feel sorry for us, or feel how courageous we were to overcome our back ground, or think we were deprived. It was home, a place where we had the love of our mothers and the wisdom of our fathers. We were sorry for those who lived in ten room mansions with a governess, who barely saw their mother and whose fathers were remote figures they barely knew, and who had to go to boarding school and fag for bullies. Our common room was the moorland where the larks spiralled up into the sky singing a welcome, or the field above which the lapwing was doing acrobatics in the air, or the wood where the deer and rabbits lived and where you might glimpse a fox sneaking along or hear the rooks argue. It wasn't deprived, it was home!

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