The suburbs – long sneered at for being dreary and stultifying – have always been far livelier and more entertaining than they’re given credit for. In this witty and sharply observed account of what it was like to grow up in one in the 1950s and ’60s, David Randall gives the other side of suburbia: full of absurdities and happiness, scandals and follies, and inhabitants both sage and silly. Here, at last, is the truth about what life was really like behind the often-closed (but not always net) curtains of our semi-detacheds. This is that rare book: a most unmiserable memoir.

DAVID RANDALL read history at Clare College, Cambridge, and worked for more than thirty years as a writer and senior executive for The Observer, The Independent and Independent on Sunday. He has written six books, one of which has been translated into twenty-two languages, and writes a monthly column for Italian news magazine Internazionale. He has lived in the suburbs nearly all of his life, where he and his wife Pam have had four sons, who have produced four grandchildren.