Hugh Leonard - Home Before Night

First penguin paperback 1981.
Hugh leonard's delightful autobiographical evocation of his dublin childhood in the thirties and forties is like an irish cider with rosie crammed with people and conversations, rich in poetry, full of love, laughter and rare pleasures.

'entrancing. The playwright author's gift of language and apparently total recall makes his account of growing up in the thirties and forties absolutely irresistible' - sunday telegraph

'he has the simplicity and genius of dylan thomas and brendan behan if you want to look at the south dublin working class of the thirties and forties, here it is a childhood that anyone would envy' - the times

'an unqualified delight. [he has] a marvellous eye for character, the ability to weave show-stopping funny stories into larger narrative and to recreate the past with the sensuous immediacy of childhood'

Irving wardle in books and bookmen

Hugh leonard's irresistible memoirs of his youth continue into adolescence and young adulthood in the companion volume out after dark.