"I was born in I913.  Of the war that started in the following year, I remember only bread that was dark and bitter, and being hoisted on to a chair alongside a bonfire on Armistice Night and starting to sing a song called 'God send You Back To Me' in a brazen alto.  

We were twelve children in all and I was the youngest of eight brothers.  In the picture left I am the rebellious-looking chap aged about 3 and sitting on the knee of my oldest brother Emlyn.  In a socially softer setting this might have been fine, but in a place and home when short-legged survival meant more than long-rooted ancestors the going could be rough.

I was, I suppose, an impudent, assertive child, giving to making loud, rash statements when everybody else had agreed that a long, cautious silence was the only answer to our problems.  When any pressure of anxiety among my elders needed to be relieved, standard practice was to take me to one side and belt me.  
 

There was also a tiny, lightless chamber beneath the stairs into which I was periodically thrown, and I would spend an hour or so banging defiant fists against the door.  By the time I was eight I had the complexes of Edmond Dantes and the calluses of a blacksmith.  During this period I saw no theme of logic in human life and often said so in terms which won me yet another cuffing and a spell in that little crypt.
 

A few yards down the street was a huge colliery which gave us the creeps.  All around were hills which gave us intimations of hope and bowed our legs in the course of our rapid climbs and descents."