'Farmers in my childhood were as anxious for a male heir as any Tudor monarch securing dynastic succession.'

A small Cotswold farm is the setting for a classic struggle of wills.

Robert Worlock, eccentric and demanding, resolutely maintains the old ways, determined above all to make his son into a farmer fit to take over the family acres.

His son, David, is equally determined not to be bullied into something he neither wants nor likes. His childhood becomes a battleground: can he find a way to make his father love him without denying his right to determine his own life?

Sometimes heart-rending, sometimes amusing, always elegantly written and deeply honest, this account of a young man finding himself in the most difficult of circumstances deserves to take its place among the great childhood memoirs.