A small green softback book with the author pictured as a Barnardo boy on the front, and a veteran traveller on the back. It has 358 pages, 31 chapters, all with informative titles, and the whole divided into three sections by two collections of photographs: the first, including the full length portrait of the Duke of Grafton, is mostly illustrating his childhood in Barnardo's, and the second his world-wide travels.

In many ways the whole book is about journeying, for it begins with his memories of being removed from his home because of neglect by his parents, and of admission to Dr Barnardo's Homes at Stepney, where he was separated from his sister, whom he never saw again. The first attempt to board him out with a family in the country was a frightening experience, and he was soon removed, but the next gave him a year or two of family life, and a foster brother, happiness, and an affectionate first name that lasted his life, but a near tragedy almost terminated it at the age of 7, and brought him back into the institutional care of Dr Barnardo's Homes during World War II.

The not so little Billy William then moved through the Home at Much Wenlock, the Boys Garden City, Euston Hall (the Duke of Grafton's Home that accomodated a hundred or more children evacuated from London), and finally Watts Naval Training School. All of these Homes are described sensitively and with detail.

Poor vision excluded him from joining the Royal Navy, then emigration to Australia, and training as a printer were proposed, but not followed, and his placement for training as a farm worker had some ups and downs. Among various other employments he was working at a factory that had a wall blown down by a doodlebug, and after this he pre-empted his call up by signing on for army service.

The fifteen years of Army service occupy two chapters of travel and adventure, comradeship and security, during which time he remained in touch with Barnardo's, and returned to civilian life much the wiser for all of his military experience. He obtained work in a grocery shop, and became an expert on cheeses, and gradually worked his way up the trade, and also joined the Ipswich Operatic and Dramatic Society, in which he performed for some 40 years or so.

His work in the grocery trade took him abroad, and sustained his interest in travel, but when personal service in the trade was replaced by self-service, his attachment diminished, and he followed a long-standing interest in charitable work by becoming a ward orderly in a hospital for Mental Care. This proved so worthwhile that he took formal training for two years to qualify as a nurse in mental health, and later did his training in general nursing, and spent some twenty years in the profession. His life also included charitable work with patients making visits abroad, and he continued with his chorus and opera performances.

A few paragraphs are given to a girl-friend relationship that lasted a year or two, and included an engagement to be married, but this perished with the passage of time.

It was a much longer-lasting relationship with a friend with whom he had shared many pursuits in their earlier times that later extended his interest in travelling, after accepting an invitation to visit him and his family in New Zealand. Thereafter, much of the text and illustrations in the book are concerned with journeys around the world in which the author seems to have obtained more unalloyed pleasure than in some of his earlier journeys.

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