Can you find me is precisely what its subtitle states, a family history…. In this case, although Christopher Fry has distinct recollections of the first eleven years of his life …, there is no question of our being given his own version of them. This is no child among you taking notes; there are no ruthless revelations. Neither is there any self-deception, which can be so much more alienating than any amount of ruthlessness. The "I" is almost purely formal.

Not entirely formal, of course; for the fact that the writer is Christopher Fry, the successful man who was once the child, accounts for the pleasantly authoritative tone, and indeed for the circumstance that the story was written at all, for nobody but a famous man would devote a book to very ordinary ancestors and only an experienced writer could make them interesting if he did….

Mr Fry makes...