Plot

A young boy living on the outskirts of London comes of age during the uncertain days of World War II.

A semi-autobiographical project by John Boorman about a nine year old boy called Bill as he grows up in London during the blitz of World War II. For a young boy, this time in history was more of an adventure, a total upheaval of order, restrictions and discipline. The liberating effect of the war on the women left behind. And the joy when Hitler blows up your school.—Colin Tinto <[email protected]>

Bill Rohan, a young boy living on the outskirts of London experiences the exhilaration of World War II, as seen through the eyes of director John Boorman, who also wrote and produced the autobiographical film. During this period, Bill learns about sex, death, love, hypocrisy, and the faults of adults as he prowls the ruins of bombed houses on Rosehill Avenue. His childlike father is off chasing patriotic dreams of glory from behind a military clerk's typewriter; his teenage sister runs wild; his mother can't cope; and everything in the end will eventually turn out all right.—alfiehitchie

Now on the far side of middle age, Bill Rowan remembers back to his growing up period in suburban London during WWII, he ten years old when the war broke out. Beyond his father Clive enlisting and what his absence meant, Bill saw the war as an adventure, the specific events more anticlimactic for him compared to the fear driven into the populace of what could happen. Even with the nightly German air raids and bombs actually dropped in their neighborhood, he saw the bomb sites as a playground from which to collect shrapnel and with his newfound friends to destroy whatever survived the bombs. While his younger sister Susie was too young to comprehend fully what the war meant, his mid-teen sister Dawn went on as a teenage girl with raging hormones is apt to focus on, namely boys, or in wartime young men of the military variety, she often feigning the option of death compared to not being with someone, most specifically a Canadian soldier training nearby. And while Bill's mother Grace was ill-prepared emotionally to be without Clive, she had to grow up quickly to deal with leading the family through the changing times. With Dawn, Grace could see her own teen period a bit more clearly due to the war and what she would have done differently if she had to do it all over again.—Huggo

Bill is your average young boy, living in London with his parents and two sisters. His should be a conventional childhood but it is September 1939 and the UK is at war with Germany. In the next few years Bill will grow up with the fear and devastation of war, but also some fond memories.—grantss