Childhoods changed at an incredible pace in twentieth-century England & in this memoir Donald Cook recalls a childhood without electricity or running water in the house a childhood with only a handful of cars on the road a childhood alien to those born only a few decades later. Catapults fishing breeding rabbits: Kids Tough as Old Boots paints a detailed picture of family life & growing up in the peaceful world of 1930s rural Sussex dark clouds of war gathering unseen on the horizon.