This evocative memoir recaptures with almost photographic recall the now-distant world of a 1950s childhood. Set largely in industrial North Staffordshire, it tells of a boy's first eleven years of life. Born to an Ayrshire mother and an English Gordon Highlander, he knows that he belongs to both nations. It is a captivating study of memory, identity, and belonging. The author's wonderfully detailed recollections of childhood are confirmed and supplemented by documentary evidence. The story has strong roots in the rural and industrial poverty of parts of both Scotland and England in the first half of the twentieth century and earlier generations. The author tells of people who encouraged him or alarmed him as a child and of his thirst for learning that eventually led him to study at Cambridge, Nottingham, and Hull. A brief backstory tells of a war-time letter sent during a lull in the Battle of Normandy, a Wigtownshire elopement, and an English grandmother who could neither read nor write.