First published more than thirty years ago, this is the first part of Richard Hoggart's autobiography, tracing his early schooling, the friends he met and the mentors he admired and ends when, having obtained a degree from Leeds University, he decides to head off travelling. It describes the situation of working-class England between the wars and life in the back-to-backs in Hunslet. Hoggart's books include The Uses of Literacy, Speaking to Each Other, An idea and its Servant, An English Temper and An Idea of Europe, with Douglas Johnson.