Homework

Born in 1958, the only child of a dinner lady and a sheet-metal worker, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of shortages and the Second World War. It was a time of Airfix models, wargames, conkers and frugality: Geoff's father splurges on a mono record player — before imposing a blockade on buying records.

But far from being a story of hardship overcome, Homework is a celebration of opportunities afforded to Dyer's generation. A grammar-school education leads to books, prog rock (on a new stereo), girls, beer and, eventually, a place at Oxford. He would go on to embrace a life his parents could barely recognise. In Homework, Dyer returns to the source and asks what it means to live through an era of complex social transformation.