Playing on the marshes of the Solway Firth one day, young Alan Edmunds could have little idea of the significance of the plane crash he was about to witness, from the wreckage of which he pulled an American Air Force pilot.Focusing on successive generations of one family, Brian Robson's Snakes, Some Ladders charts the progress of Alan, his son David, and finally his grandson Ralph, from post-war austerity to present-day prosperity. From national service at Catterick to university at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, Alan's journey allows his son and grandson to follow in his footsteps and attend the same college.And, when Ralph meets a young American woman in a taxi in Oxford, the mystery of the young airman whose life Alan and his school friend Michael saved all those years before can finally be solved.