Early years

This sort of Christianity was very different to the sort I experienced as a child. The third of four sons, I was christened a Roman Catholic when I was a month old; I'm told that the priest, before pouring water over the baby's head, puts salt into the child's mouth, to bring cleansing. When I asked my mother, years later, why I had been christened, she said: "To wash away the sin of Adam". As the first 21 years of my life was to testify, the salt and the water didn't work.

As a child I was an affectionate little boy, fond of my mother and often thoughtful to the needs of others. I would cry easily at other people's hurt and pain. While my two brothers (one 18 months older than me, the other just 14 months younger) had lots of friends, I preferred to read and play chess. I once went to the shop and bought a birthday card for my older brother, much to the amazement and praise of the rest of my family; I was aged about seven.

Although I seemed more emotionally sensitive than my other brothers, I was also fiercely independent and single-minded and happy to express it. This brought me into conflict with my oldest brother, a sulky and selfish bully who was, at least when we were younger, clearly the favourite of my parents, particularly my mother. He resented having to share his world with three younger siblings and was violent and vindictive to anyone who stood up to him, which often meant me. While my young and immature parents favoured their first-born son, they were indifferent to my pleas for protection from this hateful and aggressive oldest brother and often indifferent to me. After all, my mother wanted two boys and two girls; she had her two boys, then I came along.

My dad was an angry, resentful, distant man, harassed by a debilitating stammer that he inherited from his father, which was passed on, in varying degrees, to each of his four sons, particularly the oldest one. Our home was, for me, quite a violent place, with my dad ready to lash out at any of his four sons with punishment that was often much greater than the crime, an aggressive older brother who could not be controlled and a dissatisfied and unfulfilled mother. This environment produced some very brutalising experiences.