A small blue softback book of 150 pages in 18 chapters. On the front cover is a picture of the author in his maturity as a business man. The first edition of this fine Barnardo autobiography was published in 1988, in hardcover, by Dennis Sloan in association with The Self Publishing Association. The edition presented here is the seventh book of Badgerwood's series of Barnardo Biographies.

It is a fine account of boarding out under the aegis of Dr Barnardo's Homes, the author having been the twenty third boy under the care of the redoubtable Mrs Bird who was, by his time, a foster-mother of experience and character. His life with her in a Suffolk village occupies the first two chapters and his boyhood; it makes good reading. His return to Barnardo's at the age of fourteen was followed by five days at the Headquarters in Stepney, to which he gives a whole chapter of excited adulation and condensed Barnardo history, before his entry to the Watts Naval Training School at North Elmham in Norfolk.

Under the title of The Top Deck Toilet Sweeper he gives an entertaining and penetrating account of the WNTS as experienced by a youngster coming from a relatively robust childhood with the capability of adapting to a rigid discipline, and finding within it enjoyment, inspiration, and a remarkable propensity to use opportunities to further his own ends; the chapter title describes the job that he organised for himself and achieved thereby a recognised and relatively useful role that led to his becoming the 'Admiral's Houseboy' in due course. It is no surprise that he should turn to business successfully in his later life.

While at Watts he was enabled to return to Mrs Bird's for holidays, a facility that Barnardo's organised, even during the years of the Blitz.

It was customary to go from Watts to the Royal Navy at the age of sixteen, but Dennis Sloan chose the Merchant Navy, apparently to avoid the experience of going through the RN Training Ship, HMS Ganges, where his inablity to swim would have brought inevitable confrontation with the authorities. There is a sensitive account of the different impact of Stepney during the few days of transition there before going out into the world, from his initial impression some four years earlier.

The story of his progress through the Merchant Navy is interrupted by a short chapter entitled A Very Special Lady that describes the finding of his real mother, and the details of his childhood, and thereby replacing a deep need with appreciation and gratitude.

He comes ashore from the Merchant Navy to work on the production of naval aircraft, first as a factory floor worker, and then as shop steward, and this provides the background to his decision to start his own business as a travelling salesman, which he specifies as his training school. There is a full account of how he became involved in selling and, in time, manufacturing carpets, which led to success in making money.

Within the business world he develops his own family life and social position, but also experiences a fall and rise again from alcohol addiction, told with frankness and great insight, and finally his success in becoming a pilot and flying his plane over the village of his boarded out childhood - and seeing it from a different view.

Throughout this enjoyable book there is an appreciation of Barnardo's in general and of Mrs. Bird in particular.

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