The memories I have committed to paper are genuine: they have lived with me for the past sixty-eight years. They are as fresh in my mind today as they were at the time of their birth, and I have written them down in truth. No decade repeats itself; the world is forever moving on, and I thought it worthwhile to record a childhood that was characteristic of its time. Each of us who grew up during those years will have our own particular memories. These are mine, but they will have much in common with the children of my generation: anyone who was a child of the fifties.