Edward Bond was born in 1934 into a working-class family in Holloway, North London. In 1940 he was evacuated to Cornwall and subsequently to his grandparents in Ely, Cambridgeshire. In 1944 he returned to London and attended Crouch End Secondary Modern School, where he was not thought good enough to take the eleven-plus exam, which was necessary in order for him to continue school. He therefore left school at age fifteen, ending his formal education. However, while still in school, he went to see Donald Wolfit' s production of Macbeth, which had a profound impact on him. He later said in an interview, quoted in Bond: A Study of His Works: "for the very first time ... I met somebody who was actually talking about my problems, the life I'd been living, the political society around me ... I knew all those people, they were in the street or in the...