This is Frank McCourt's sad, funny, bittersweet memoir of growing up in New York in the 30s and in Ireland in the 40s. It is a story of extreme hardship and suffering, in Brooklyn tenements and Limerick slums - too many children, too little money, his mother Angela barely coping as his father Malachy's drinking bouts constantly brought the family to the brink of disaster. It is a story of courage and survival against apparently overwhelming odds.

Snow is falling all over Dublin. It is half an hour to the start of the New Year. On the rooftop of 44 Seville Place, a ten year old boy clings to the steel pole of a television aerial. His father urges him to turn the aerial towards England. The boy reaches up and, in that moment, pictures from a foreign place beam into their home and change their lives forever.