The wedding of my maternal grandparents, Tom Murphy and Adèle Goddaert, probably in Rotherhithe circa 1900. No documentary record of the marriage has survived.

Dad with alto saxophone, early 1920s.

My mother (left) and her sister Eileen (right) with friend (centre), perhaps dressed for an amateur performance, circa 1920.

Dad, on tenor sax (right) wrote ‘Piccadilly Hotel’ at the bottom, with a date that looks like ‘1920’. But he was only fourteen in that year, so the last digit must be an imperfect 6 or 8. The imprint of ‘The Bungalow, Brockley Rise’ is another enigma.

Mum and Dad, perhaps early in their marriage.

Mum with me, aged about six months, at the seaside in 1935.

On holiday with Mum and Dad, a year or two later.

Snap of Mum and Dad, probably taken by a seaside photographer, early 1930s.

Group photograph of my first classmates at St Joseph’s Academy, Blackheath, probably taken in 1946. I am in the middle of the front row.

The Station Band of RAF Cottesmore, supplemented by volunteers, marches through the village on Battle of Britain Day 1941 or 1942.

81 Millmark Grove. DL aged 13/14 in proprietorial pose.

‘Aaah . . . aren’t they sweet?’ Jenefer Smith and I outside her father’s shop in Mount St Charles, Cornwall, summer 1943.

In the back garden of 81 Millmark Grove. If there had been a ball it would have gone straight through the kitchen window.

Mary looking down on Heidelberg and the river Neckar from the parapet of the Castle, summer 1954.

Mary and I with my Aunt Lu at the Brussels Expo, 1958.

Looking into the future, on a walk in the country near Hoddesdon, 1958/59.

Members of Adm Squadron, RAC Centre, Bovington Camp, Dorset, in 1956 or 1957. Lance-Corporal Lodge is on the left of the second row.

The Bovington Camp PRI clerk at work, probably in 1956.

Our Whitsun wedding in Hoddesdon, May 1959.

A reunion with my Aunt Eileen at Palm Springs, California, April 1965.

Mary and the somewhat alarmed Julia and Stephen beside a geyser at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, July 1965.

Christopher learns to walk in our garden in El Cerrito, California, 1969.

Leonard (‘Lenny’) Michaels and I at Stinson Beach, June 1969.

Malcolm Bradbury as a young man in the late 1950s or early 1960s.

Mary and Park Honan, in Providence, Rhode Island, February 1965, at a farewell meal before we set off on our trek westwards.

The Honan family: Park, Jeannette and their children Corinna and twins ’Thieu and ’Tasha, at St Brévin-les- Pins, 1961 or ‘62.

Richard Hoggart, photographed in his office at Birmingham University by Clayton Evans, circa 1963.

Portrait of DL by Paul Morby, with Birmingham University Library in the background, 1974.