My partner persuaded me to read The Goalkeeper’s Revenge and Other Stories by Bill Naughton when he came across it in the loft and in September I took it on my commute.

It was published in 1961, so was a good 15 years old before he read it as a child, and it’s a fascinating snapshot of working-class life in Lancashire in the late 1950s. It deals quickly with some big themes: ambition, family, and death in the second story, as a boy is killed by a car in a karting race.

Boys are sent on errands by women on the street, men are out at work whilst women are making great housewives, except in one story when they have the temerity to start reading, and then even more shockingly, writing, and housework grinds to a halt. It’s interesting there aren’t more women at work, given this is a working class street, the exceptions being widows.

It also deals with disability amongst boys, what it means to be happy, and trying for something you believe in, in these thirteeen stories ‘for and about boys’. I can see why it was great reading for my partner as a child and it’s even better reading now, as a glimpse into a world left behind, with wonderful Northern turns of phrase that don’t appear often enough in novels.

And the price on the back? 35p.