I returned to my childhood home in the village of Prickwillow in Cambridgeshire about five years ago. The council estate was built in 1950 and is typical of ones that grew up everywhere after the war. The place looked so poor and run-down, I thought: “How the hell did I ever get out of this?” The area around Prickwillow is arable, treeless and flat. The soil is peat and anything grows in it: cereal crops, sugar beet and celery. In the winter there was mile after mile of black soil. Between the fields were dykes to drain the land, which made everywhere inaccessible. It was only when I was a teenager that a farmer’s field was turned into a play area with swings.

Our home, 28 Kingdon Avenue, a red-brick semi, was at the end of a cul-de-sac. I was the first child born in the street, in 1951. My granny (my father’s mother) lived at No 13, and I often dropped in to see her. We had a big garden at the back and allotments adjoined our land. From our garden I could see Ely cathedral four miles away.

My father grew up on a farm in the village and was known as Freddy from Folly Farm. He spent his time in the garden when he came home from his office job. He grew rhubarb, apples, runner beans, cauliflowers, cabbages. One year he had so many cauliflowers he put a sign up outside the house: “Please help yourself.” Being British, nobody did. So he put up another sign: “Small cauliflowers, thrupence, large cauliflowers, sixpence.” And they all went.

We had a brick-built wash- house with a copper bath where my mother, Gwendoline, did all the washing. You couldn’t help but feel sorry for her on Mondays, the traditional washing day, when her hands were red-raw. My mother was a traditional housewife, apart from having a part-time job as a dinner lady and cleaner at the village primary school. I stayed with her when she cleaned and read books or played adventure games in the school fields.

My mother complained she’d had to settle for “utility furniture” because of the war. Furniture, like everything else, was in short supply, and I had a ration card when I was a baby. We ate our meals in the kitchen, where there was an old table and little pantry. Most of our food came straight from the garden. I went through a phase when I wouldn’t eat anything. My father told me that I would get so thin that if I went out into the garden a worm would come out of its hole and pull me down. I’ve had an aversion to gardening ever since.

When they built the estate, it was too early for central heating, so I spent a lot of my childhood feeling cold. There was a coal fire in the front room, where we watched television and read. I had arguments with my sister, Valerie, who is two years older, over who could have the chair nearest the fire.

My bedroom was awful. At first, my sister and I shared the back room before I moved into the tiny boxroom. My parents had the master bedroom at the front.

The 1960s hit Prickwillow in a small way. I put up a few posters of the Beatles. There was no room for a desk in my room, so I usually did my homework at the kitchen table.

Throughout my childhood, I found Prickwillow to be a claustrophobic place, which is ironic as it is so open.

For my generation, television gave you the idea that you could escape. We got a television in about 1956, and I loved watching all the adventure programmes, like Robin Hood. A BBC serialisation of Great Expectations was a big influence: it made me think maybe I could get out and become a gentleman like Pip.

My parents were ambitious for me. My father was the first person in the village to go to grammar school — Soham Grammar School — which I also attended. He cycled six miles across the Fens to get to it. I got a taxi to Ely and then a bus to Soham with the other pupils. It took for ever. After I left Soham Grammar, it combined with Soham Village College, where Ian Huntley (the child killer) worked as a caretaker.

In 1970, I left home for St Catherine’s College, Oxford. For the first time in my life I had a room with central heating. I couldn’t believe I could walk to parks, pubs and cinemas. At Oxford, everyone roared with laughter when I told them the name of the village I came from.

Interview by Louise Johncox

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