This autobiography of wartime London describes how the author, her sisters and brother were put in an orphanage after their father's suicide in 1931, leading a strict and regimented life until their mother returned and took them to a squalid flat off Baker Street. Life thereafter became a story of moonlight flits from one temporary home to another while the Blitz raged, and of semi-starvation and no schooling. Marian's sisters and brother disappeared and she was left to support her deranged and violent mother, who was eventually certified insane.