My earliest memory is the rag and bone men going down the street with a horse and cart. I was three. My other vivid memory was a year later, 1947. The Ouse, which often floods in York, flooded the streets where I lived. We had to walk around on planks on upturned buckets.
Bettering yourself was the dominant aim in life. I was part of a highly aspirational family. My father was ambitious for me. I was encouraged, mostly positively, sometimes in a more aggressive way, to work hard and go to university. We were what would be called respectable working class. The great ambition was to rise up the social scale and become middle-class professionals, which is what we did.
