This fascinating autobiography traces the life of a boy from a northern council estate, the second son of a builder's labourer, who challenges all accepted conventions and pre-conceptions about his genre. Condemned to the building-sites, back-streets and criminal courts of England he eventually fights back to avoid the prison cell that awaits him and pursue his surprisingly diverse talents. Traumatic childhood years lead to a violent life but his caring, creative inner spirit is never crushed. After a brutal beginning and early manhood there emerges at last a self-taught professional artist, architect, poet, author and legal-advocate, who must reach deep within himself to cope with the successive personal tragedies which threaten to destroy him. This no-holds-barred book 'names names' and delves deeply into every imaginable human emotion as it races through time from the 1950s to the present, and includes several visits to earlier history. It will make you cry, and laugh, and question your own values in life, and is certain to be controversial.