A small light grey hard-covered book with the title and author imprinted in gold on a maroon background on the spine. The fly-leaf has the title on the front and on the back an appropriate quotation:"on books for to rede, I me delyte" Chaucer.

The title page has the title large and bold, with the author beneath, and below this a loose etching of a pair of boots above the illustrator's name, Graham Byfield, whose light touch befits this book. The Companion Book Club is given as publisher, and on the back, below the author's copyright clause, dated 1964, is mentioned 'arrangements' with Constable and Co. of London. At the foot it is stated that Odhams Books Ltd. are printers for the publishers.

It is dedicated 'to my mother and father wherever they may be in the hope that, by this time, they have made it up,' which gives a foretaste of the author's wry humour.

Comment:A good book to have.

There is no list of contents or chapter headings, for this is a book meant to be read, from beginning to end, and it begins straigtaway, in Dickies, the Dr. Barnardo's Home in which he spent much of his boyhood, presided over by the Gaffer and Matron. He is to describe a life that was not hard, cruel, or even unhappy, but truly that of an orphan.

Having begun with his entry to this impressive edifice, and mentioned thereafter those who did a bunk to try to find the original of the ever-diminishing image of their family home, he spends the next chapter describing his own home in Newport, the loss of his seafaring father, the absence of two older brothers at sea, and the death of his mother, leaving the two young ones orphans. His life thereafter, up to the time of leaving Dickies, is told with depth, detail, humour and pathos, amongst which are incidents, such as the bringing of the two goats to Dickies in chapter 5, of outstanding entertainment.

The undertones of family feeling are there throughout, and chapter 13 is devoted to the author doing his bunk from Dickies, and finding his brother, Roy, with whom he had kept some kind of contact. The venture was successful, and re-unites them for a short while, to give a little joy to the well-disguised sadness of this orphan's tale.

In the last chapter there are glimpses of the world beyond boyhood: night-school, girls, a date or two, and a trip to the Albert Hall, but it finishes with the departure of the Gaffer, and Dickies becomes a little more homely.

Comment: Not written about an Oliver Twist, but a true and very good orphan's story