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This is a good little book - quite a historical artefact now as Dahl, writing in the mid-80´s, talks about events which are taking place about 100 years ago from today. He´s a very clear, cutting writer, with plain yet highly original style. This is mostly because of he sticks to writing about what HE finds interesting - caning, for example, which is described over and over in great detail. As he says, he is revolted by it - especially luxuriating in describing the ritual his Repton headmaster would go through when caning a child - making them bend over his sofa as he alternated between caning their bare buttocks and smoking his pipe. This man, as Dahl explains, went on to become a Bishop and then Archbishop of Canterbury. Elsewhere he describes his Norwegian heritage, the removal of his adenoids (at home, without anaesthetic) and a filthy-nailed sweetshop harridan.

My favourite passage comes late in the book, when he compares the life of the businessman he was then - working for Shell - with the writer he would later be.

"The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn´t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it."

Amen.