Martin Nicholson was born in 1937 in Rio de Janeiro, where his father was working for Shell. He had sailed across the Atlantic twice before he was three years old, the second time just days after the start of the Second World War when the family returned to South America to live near Buenos Aires in Argentina. They returned to England in 1946 to experience the realities of 'austerity Britain' of the 1950s. They faced the bitter winter of 1946-1947 in Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham, then moved to Twickenham, south west London, where they made their first real home. Like many middle class English boys of that era he went through the discipline of boarding school, in Swanage on the south coast, and at Oundle School, Peterborough. This book - the first of a projected series of four volumes that will take his memoirs up to retirement from the Diplomatic Service in 1997 - tells the story of a childhood constantly on the move, but always in the bosom of a secure and loving family - his parents and three siblings.