This is a hard book to take unless you morally place your childhood self above others - in which case it will not be of sufficient interst to merit the demands that morrison places on his readers. I was reminded a lot about my own childhood - though it neither resembled Morrison's or Thompson and Venables.

This is a searingly honest, engrossing book about a terrible and still rare phenomena - the ideal antidote to the screaming pages of the tabloids and to the quick desire to dissociate oneself from a crime which is an indictment of our country's attitude to children, class, poverty and the sheer drudgery suffered by so many children - a burning fuse that, when it reaches its end blasts away our preconceptions and smug assumptions.