Blending fiction, biography and social history in order to tell the story of his grandfather Horace Kelly, headteacher of a succession of elementary schools in impoverished areas of London, John Lucas's book is a study of one man and a period when England was changed drastically and forever. "Hod" Kelly was also a keen cricketer, a devotee of the music hall, and included among his friends the great Trade Union leader Ernest Bevin. In telling the story of his life, Lucas provides a fascinating range of insights into the lives of ordinary Londoners from WWII. Threaded throughout is an account of such people's hunger for education, and of the different ways government, church and officialdom ministered to that hunger.