‘One of my earliest memories is of the first time I tried to burn our house down. My mother had refused to give me something I wanted so I went out into the back court – or drying green - raided the dustbins and then piled up bits of paper and cardboard underneath the kitchen window of our ground floor tenement flat. Then I set the lot alight with matches that I had borrowed for the purpose. Unfortunately the blaze quickly died down and my mother was not burned to death as I had intended’. Dick Lynas looks back at his post-war childhood in the east end of Glasgow where, despite his self-confessed determination to be a spoiled brat, the strength of family values, together with the weight of his father’s hand fresh from dealing with Adolf Hitler, ultimately made a man of him – more or less. ‘Wonderful. I look forward to your final draft’. . . Mary McLaughlin, Bothwell ‘It is certainly more entertaining than listening to you going on about leadership and management’. . . Angela Hester, Strathaven ‘A stupendous saga’. . .