Although not autobiographical, the book is nonetheless based on the author’s experiences, and he did know people very much like the characters he describes. Charming, often funny and always brilliantly observed, Just Around the Corner follows the adventures of the young narrator as he grows up in a village in west Gloucestershire at the beginning of the Second World War, and gets into the sorts of scrapes that young boys always seem to get into. Key to the story is Uncle George, the village ‘character’ and really still a boy himself at heart, beloved of our narrator and his father, but cordially detested by his mother as an embarrasment to the family. Set in a rural England that has sadly now disappeared, Just Around the Corner will appeal to anyone with a nostalgic yearning for warm beer, cricket on the village green and old maids bicycling to church through the morning mist.