After years locked in her tormented marriage to a man whose mental health troubles had never been properly acknowledged, my mother was finally free. Really enjoyed this tale of a very sheltered upbringing, followed by time at a Quaker boarding school-and a late teenage European Inter rail trip in the summer after he left.

It was just the weirdness and the snobbery and the rules we had about words that could or couldn’t be used.Giving this credit in the book, he goes on to explain that the school in those days provided no lightening of pressure and anxiety: “It wasn’t like that when I was there.

Emma Clegg talks to him about his new book, which tells the story of a childhood dominated by a difficult decade and challenging personalities. I’ve never seen him sweat, never heard him raise his voice to anyone, and I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him look at his watch. To Webb, that’s part of the point: the book is a time capsule not only of the US but its inescapably white, privileged narrator. He could not accept that anything anyone ever said or did in front of him, or to him, was anything other than part of a plot.Eccentricity is almost defined by the way he found out who his father was, in the living room one evening when “a lugubrious-looking chap in a light-coloured suit with a deep plummy voice said something about the balance of payments” on the BBC news. A master was nominally in charge but at night he would stay in his flat watching films on a black- and-white TV while chaos reigned. There's one point (for example) where he is relating the story of how he entered a writing competition at school. He is the friendly, upbeat voice that millions wake up to, but Today presenter Justin Webb had a complicated, unhappy early life.

The longest-serving presenter on the Today programme always sounds cheerful, no matter how grim the news. He never knew his father, lived in a dysfunctional home and was packed off to a dreadful 'Lord of the Flies' Quaker boarding school. A smothering, snobbish mother and a mentally ill stepfather made for a tricky environment for only child Justin who perpetually walked on eggshells, going to great pains to please. He raised eyebrows within the BBC in 2006 when, at a seminar on impartiality, he said the corporation was anti-American and treated the US with "scorn and derision", according it "no moral weight". On Justin Webb’s Twitter profile, there is a telling photo of him sitting at a table with his arms held out in the air expansively, surrounded by the other Today presenters, who are all looking raptly at him and laughing.He rarely talked about his father, never had the urge to go and visit him even though he had his address. I do think snobbery is such an interesting subject, not just because it’s so peculiar, but because it’s really difficult to get rid of.