The setting is Liverpool (England, UK), in the 1950s. Post-war reconstruction is a fact of life in the background; it seems to have been going on forever. The city is often shrouded in a smog that Dickens would recognise: "I saw stars occasionally, but never constellations." Childhood is still, potentially, a time of innocence. If teenagers have been invented in America, they have not yet crossed the Atlantic; the few real-live Americans around are on airbases, tapping their feet to keep warm in a cold war. Grown-ups, in charge of the world, can display a casual racism, and other attitudes, that would be considered inflammatory today. Travel, beyond the mile or two to school or work, is a rare luxury. Private transport is far from the norm; public transport is slow and unreliable, and timetables are unfathomable (some things never change).
To anyone who lived through it, most memories of that time are in fuzzy black-and-white. This book is about a few splashes of colour.
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