The Story of My Life

I went to the same school as Jonathan Coe. He was about five years younger than me so we never communicated.

He has visited and revisited the formative years of life at school in three novels.

The characters he has followed who went to King William's (what he calls it) are set up for life by the experience. The geography of the school is recognisable and even some of the teachers are sketched thoroughly enough for me to put a real name to them.

But the books are more than about what school does to you. The context of the Rotter's Club is 1970s industrial strife and IRA atrocities. Two characters, carefully drawn to have interesting futures, die in the Tavern in the Town bombing of 1974. My wife and I were in that pub the night before.

The Closed Circle catches the key players twenty years later and offers a commentary on Blair's Britain.

The third book, which I have just finished, 'Middle England' joins the cast again in Brexit Britain. How did they vote? What did that do to their relationships?

It's a great trilogy. In fact it's bostin'.