This memoir of David Thomson’s childhood in Scotland won the NCR Book Award for Non-Fiction in 1988. Set in the 1920s, it recreates the varied community of Nairn, with its fishermen and townsfolk, its crofters and its prosperous upper-middle classes. The town has witnessed many of the triumphs and tragedies of Scottish history, and these are recalled here. But the book also charts the author’s formative years, during which, whilst playing rugby, he suffered an eye injury which nearly blinded him, and shaped his whole future.