A Childhood Without Toys or Books

Television Was My Constant Companion

Not entirely happy — Author in a cardboard box in Benghazi, Cyrenaica 1950.

Looking back, my home life as a child was rather unusual. I had few toys, if at all, and no books. Prior to going to Primary School in 1955 aged five, life involved watching a lot of television while my mother did the housework. What I watched was probably very different to the children of today.

When my parents returned from North Africa in 1951, the local council accommodated them (and me) in a wartime Nissen hut on a disused Army camp. During the Second World War, it had housed a Dutch Army field hospital. Two families were housed in each hut.

Me penned in by chicken wire at our half of a WW2 Nissen hut at Easthampstead Park 1952

Remarkably, my father purchased a black & white television set in June 1953 just in time to be able to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second. I can remember watching the ceremony, a month short of my third birthday and people from other huts queuing up outside for the chance to come in for a few minutes to watch a little of the event.