Billy Childish left school in 1976 at the age of 16, an undiagnosed dyslexic with no qualifications. Because of his lack of education he was refused entry to art school without them even looking at his portfolio. With no alternatives on offer, he entered Her Majesty's Dockyard, Chatham, as an apprentice stonemason. This, his fifth novel, takes more raw material from the author's own life and allows it to develop and twist into its own fictional truths as seen through the eyes of Childish's dysfunctional anti-hero, Gus Claudius.