Poverty.

Extreme poverty was the lot of many: Percy Cerutty, the subject of this book, didn’t taste any kind of fruit until he was fifteen. Famous men love to dwell on the hardships of their childhood; they tend to exaggerate to make clear that their climb from the bottom was heroic. Percy Cerutty had no need to exaggerate; indeed he had to tone down the story because people wouldn’t believe him.

The poverty of the time and place had been exacerbated by the absence of his father; he had given up the unequal struggle and deserted his wife and eight children and taken refuge in drink. In Percy’s last image of him he was a trembling figure in a hospital beg, suffering from the withdrawal of alcohol.

The Cerutty family were often without decent food. Percy grew up- or rather didn’t grow up often undernourished.

Many years later his mother told him that it was a miracle that he was alive: he had suffered every known ailment in his infancy.

His family tree – or perhaps his family bush – contained so many different strains that it probably provided a nucleus of vitality that sustained him.

That nucleus, however, did not ease his spiritual loneliness: at an age when most boys were enjoying the careless raptures of youth, he was usually searching for some meaning to his life.

He could find no refuge in organised religion: he embraced Eastern mysticism but became no wiser. Marriage merely increased his feeling of loneliness.