I was born at the beginning of WW2 at Teddington (Tide-Ending-Town) on the River Thames in what would now be called Greater London. My memories are mostly of fooling around on the river on home-made rafts (I couldn’t swim but we never capsized) or excavating intricate labyrinths of underground tunnels with other local boys. These tunnels were periodically demolished by our parents, who considered them dangerous. There was also an equally dangerous gravel pit somewhere that occupied much of ou...