This autobiography is a memoir of a childhood spent in Scotland almost 70 years ago. It is a story of contrasts: the freedom of an upbringing running wild in the countryside and the disciplines of a boarding school education. Douglas Sutherland remembers his very earliest years spent on a remote island in the Orkneys, set amidst some of the stormiest seas in the world. He was 6 years old before he saw a tree or pressed a light switch, so untouched by "progress" were the islands. In contrast are the descriptions of the author's school days, first at a small eccentric preparatory school on the shores of the Dornoch Firth, outside Nairn on the Scottish mainland, where the headmaster spent most of his time preparing his pupils for the next world war, and later, at Trinity College, Glenalmond, which then had the reputation of being the toughest of all public schools.