Harold Woof was childhood buddies with Pinter, and his book”paints a nostalgic but unsentimental picture of his boyhood friendship with Pinter in east London and of the other members of the ‘Hackney gang’ – a small band of firm friends who met at Hackney grammar school in the early 1940s. As Jews, Woolf and Pinter were sometimes set upon by local fascist thugs, Woolf recounts, but Pinter, who was a talented schoolboy sportsman, gave as good as he got.”