The Happiest Days

If Thomas Cardwell’s schooldays are the happiest days of his life, God help him for the rest of it. From the mid fifties to the late sixties he goes through all the traumas of childhood and adolescence, and then some. They are visited on him like the plagues of Egypt: the cane, acne, frustrated sexuality, dimly understood political theory . . . and so on and on. The action takes place against the background of the times. The Cuban Missile Crisis, the Profumo Affair, mini-skirts and the Beatles are all part of Tom’s bewildered world. Never really up to it, he staggers from crisis to crisis, unable to make real sense of what is going on, and lacking even the nous at least to pretend (like everyone else) that he does. The Happiest Days is both a history lesson and a hilarious fiction.