A blue, medium-sized hardback book with the author's name, sans serif, upper and lower case, and the title, italics with serifs, upper case, all imprinted in gold along the spine, with a small S & W at the foot. There is a fly-leaf with the title repeated, and on the back of this a list of other books by the author including the play Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be. The Title Page has the author at the top followed by the title in bold and larger, with the Publishers, as from London, at the bottom. Oveleaf the confirmed publication year, and a note stating 11 on 12pt Imprint type by Cox and Wyman Limited at London, Fakenham and Reading.
The Contents, in 164 pages, are divided into: Introduction, Earliest Remembrances, Bedford, Kingston, Goldings, and My Situation. The Illustrations are listed as: At Cardington Abbey, Kingston boys, Goldings, & The 'Situation Photograph.' There is a dedication to his daughter, Sally Norman, on the back of which page is the quotation: Ernest Hemingway was once asked: 'What is the best early training for a writer?' He replied: 'An unhappy childhood.'
Comment:An autobiography in which an experienced writer concentrates on his Barnardo childhood.
The Introduction. Having received his dossier from Barnardo's the author begins with a copy of the first page of this, which states his illegitimate birth and the application for his admission to Barnardo's, at the age of seven years, by an anonymous titled Roman Catholic lady who had made herself responsible for him in the prior two years. He relates that his own response, as an author, to the frequent veneration of Barnardo's, as presented on the television in 1966, Dr. Barnardo's centenary year, was anger, since he had spent almost ten years in one or another of their Homes and enjoyed hardly a minute of it. He remembered above all being unloved and cruelly treated. He had recently enquired of Barnardo's and received a full report of his time in the Homes.
The illegitimate son of an 'adventuress,' he apparently came under the the care of the titled lady in Onslow Square, London, having been given the surname of his putative father. He had early memories of an affluent household before the devastation of being removed forcibly and taken to Barnardo's at the age of seven. Straightaway he was designated as backward because of his inablity to read, and on this basis was sent to a sombre place called Cardington Abbey, to join children with similar disabilities. He then gives a haunting account of his relationships with staff, children - one strange girlfriend in particular - and teachers, for only one of whom he tries his best, all of which he likens later to Dotheboys Hall, in retrospect. He moves on to the Kingston Home and describes the Superintendant, Mr Gardner, in a far more sombre light than that provided by Leslie Thomas of the same experience around the same time.
Frank Norman accounts for himself as intimidated, and relates that he only had one letter from his mother. He joins the band, and his term 'Banana Boy' comes from this period, not without a little associated pleasure it seems. His growth and development thereafter becomes inextricably involved with a refugee boy from the Spanish Civil War called Pedro. Together, they are moved on to the school at Goldings around 1944, and Norman describes himself as a misfit in a very physical and old-fashioned place where he experiences the regimental scrubbing of floors, masturbation, and homosexuality among equals, 'bad company,' and persecution sufficient to cause him to run away - a not rare occurrence in the various strictly disciplined Barnardo Boys Homes. Along with this he relates being flogged by the PT instructor and, his social life again stretching beyond the bounds of Goldings, to the enjoyment of girls and cigarettes, while, somehow amidst all this, he developed an unorthodox method of reading and writing that he used later to good purpose.
He apparently did not acquire a specific trade from Goldings, but was prepared for what was quaintly termed by Barnardo's a 'situation' out in the world, and gives a powerful account of how this brought him into the London world of spivs, women, and employment in a fairground.
Comment: It remains for the reader to relate this unhappy picture of the author's Barnardo childhood and youth to his cockney persona of 'scar-faced, ex-jailbird, illegitimate son of a costermonger,' the author of Fings Ain't Wot they used T'be and man about town.
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