The author's father was the manager of a biscuit factory in an industrial area of north west London. He had served in the Great War, and after the war his first wife died in the 1919 flu pandemic, leaving him with a young daughter. He remarried and had another four children, Alan being the second. With scant formal education themselves, he and his wife were able to offer all the children a good education, and to Alan a medical one as well. It was...