An account of the realities of being a teacher in some of the most deprived cities in the UK. This account though is neither romantic about young people nor pessimistic about the situation. It focuses on the teacher as a human being who experiences the difficulties of producing successful learners, leading to a range of emotions and stress.

This is a memoir which covers much more of the author’s life than his work as a teacher. Later, as a policy adviser in a well-known think tank and major teachers’ unions, it reveals anecdotes about well-known political characters such as Michael Gove, when he was Minister for Education, and his then sidekick Dominic Cummings.

The core of the book is an account of the author’s social and emotional life. Martin Johnson grew up in post-war London in a family which was increasingly affluent materially and impoverished emotionally. He describes becoming an isolated teenager, damaged sufficiently that it has taken most of his later life to become a more rounded social being. It also describes how getting married when an immature twenty-two-year-old had repercussions, both the rough and the smooth, for the next forty years. Finally, it goes on to describe finding happiness with his second wife in his sixties.