This book is a candid, unsparing and darkly funny memoir of Webb’s far from ordinary childhood; with his mother’s undiagnosed psychological problems, his step-father’s untreated ones and his spartan Quaker boarding school, life was challenging. Drawing on themes of mental health, masculinity, grief and childhood guilt, Webb’s coming of age story portrays both personal and national dysfunction set against the grey backdrop of Britain in the 1970’s. A time of strikes, inflation and IRA bombings . A time when societal attitudes were very different to how they are now.

Webb is in conversation with Dame Jenni Murray, journalist, author and broadcaster, best known for presenting BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour from 1987 to 2020.