Off the straight and narrow

The picture of a maverick which emerges from this book is ever more strongly drawn. In this sequel to his auto- biographical No Voice from the Hall, published in 1998, John Harris takes us forwards, backwards and sideways around his earlier account. There is less fishing, and the kindly figure of ‘Snozzle’, his Uncle Sid, the upholsterer-cum-antique dealer who ‘took on’ Harris in his teenage years, appears only fleetingly. The anecdotes are more circumstantial, the edited and neatly dovetailed snapshots of the conservative upbringing against which Harris revolted, and subsequent revolts against authority in all its forms.

Harris the putative anarchist, destined for grammar school and a red-brick university, takes his first step off the straight and narrow when he deliberately fails his eleven-plus. From then on his path is serendipitous – evacuated from Uxbridge to Brandon in Suffolk in 1944, he makes his first reconnaissance over a burnt-out country house, and pulls a perfect prehistoric flint dagger from the shallow soil.