It is 1933 and William Woodruff, sixteen years old and passionately idealistic, is leaving the Lancashire of his childhood so vividly portrayed in 'The Road to Nab End'. Set down in the East End of London, William discovers filthy tenements and the seedy glamour of the Sunday picture house. He finds himself a beer-swilling landlady with a predatory daughter and a tattoed madman of a son with whom he has to share his bed. At night school, William discovers his love of learning and decides to get an education. And as Mosley's blackshirts provoke street fighting, he witnesses the courage of ordinary people in the face of impending war - a war in which he himself will soon be fighting.

The second volume of Woodruff's memoirs starts with him having arrived in Poplar in the early 1930s. On spec, he turns up at a steel foundry and luckily gets a job, also finding digs with an old couple in Bow. It also covers his winning of a place at Oxford and his part in the war effort.