Surviving the Battleground of Childhood

This is the true story of the first fifteen years of a boy's life, growing up in the coal mining communities of Scotland and England in the 1950s and 60s, and how he survives the adversities of that battleground.



The book is written on two levels; on the first level it is a compulsive, easy to read, true story. The protagonist's narration compels the reader's empathy as, from his earliest memories, he is beaten by a father who - subjected to the harsh existence of a coal miner, and frustrated by the betrayals of an unfaithful wife - vents his anger on him. After suffering a nervous breakdown in his earliest childhood, Thomas endeavours to escape his father's tyranny and his mother's complacency, but in his search for a nourishing love he falls foul of situations he is ill equipped to deal with; often taking him into forbidden and dangerous areas.