In everyone’s life there’s the pleasures, adventures, challenge and memories of growing up, the play and friendships and the influences that people and places have on our lives. Rise & Rise Again is set amidst a time of tremendous change, times and experiences that are past and live on in the memories and tales we tell and hear. It’s of a time and place, of a background that will resonate with people and families from villages, towns and cities across the land. The building, management and leadership of an inner-city school could never have been expected to make such an impact and relate to social investment and change, but indeed that’s just what it did. This insight into a social journey leads to many a place – whether in memory or imagination – it’s a journey that has humour, love, ambition and frustrations. Throughout, the reader is placed in a world that on the one hand seems so distant yet was so recent. Enjoy this journey, its various courses lead to many a new story.