Foreword by Philip Pullman

Porthmawr was in no mood for putting out flags, and not a scrap of bunting flew to welcome Ashton Vaughan back after a long absence from the Welsh seaside town. He was a hopeless alcoholic drifter, and what was more he was a member of the notorious Vaughan family. His brother still lived, aloof and eccentric, a thorn in Porthmawr's respectable side. It was only Gladstone Williams, Llew Morgan and a small band of young boys from the back streets who were stalwart in their defence of Ashton's dissipated character. Gladstone's misunderstanding of Porthmawr's most despised residents was to blame for this, and too late he realised that his misplaced loyalty only hastened the violent ending of a vendetta that had begun long before Ashton's drunken escapades.

Stead Jones said in 1964, "Army signals took me to France on D-Day, an experience which seems more alarming now than it did then, and to the Far East. Promotion during these years - from Private to Corporal - came rapidly. After demobilisation, I became a student once more, and now find myself at forty a lecturer in Liberal Studies in a Lancashire Technical College. I like reading, listening to music, talking Welsh and playing golf badly."