A working class lad returning to bomb strafed London in 1941, had no idea of the dramatic future which awaited him. His world was a street in southeast London, but out there, beyond the seas, a strange world beckoned him. It was a life he could never have envisaged. A rollercoaster of adventure, of triumph, and disaster, which would change him out of all recognition. Initiation came in a convoy of ships with veterans of the war at sea, and dangerous nights sailing with them, alone on a moonlit Indian Ocean. Wartime India, in abject poverty, restless to be shorn of the British Raj, and a narrow escape from an angry mob. Africa, and South America, where he experienced arrest and confinement in an Argentine prison. Then, three hard, friendless years in apartheid South Africa helped prepare him for success in the business world of post-war Britain. Above all, he met and was befriended by, people and came to understand the joys and tragedies of human existence. An understanding, which inspired many of his poems, written with the same wry humour with which he describes his colourful life.