There was never any question of my settling down into suburban domesticity after the astounding extensions of my horizons which I had experienced in the West Indies. The war was still on. My husband was absorbed in writing his book on Welfare and Planning in the West Indies (London, Oxford University Press, 1946) in the teeth of opposition from the Colonial Office, which tried to prevent his use of information acquired during his stint as an official. My son was, educationally speaking, pretty well wrecked by having been to eleven schools in five years, so he went off to St Christopher's at Letchworth, which made a remarkably good job of him and totally convinced me of the merits of a truly comprehensive education. And a key factor, mother-in-law, who had moved next door to oversee my child-rearing, had died. There was nothing to keep us in the suburbs.

We sold our house, for six times what we paid for it, to a profiteer who arrived with the cash in a suitcase, and we bought a house in the inner-city area of Liverpool 8.