Legs Eleven

There's mischief in the air from the first pages of this vividly evocative 'pawnography' (a genre described by the author as 'the biography or autobiography of a pawn in the game of life'). In the beginning it is no more than the comparatively innocent escapades of a group of young boys growing up in the Sussex countryside against the distant background of the Second World War. Their scrapes will evoke keen nostalgia in anyone who remembers a time when children were free to roam and learn by misadventure. As the boys grow up and girls begin to dominate their thoughts, the mischief becomes bawdier - but this is nothing compared with the sexual exploits of the narrator's time in National Service, chronicled with the same unblushing relish for detail. Humour, however, remains the watchword, and the reader will rejoice when lust and love appear at last to mingle in an ideal denouement. But beware - the mischief we may encounter in maturity is altogether darker and more dangerous.