When Bill Douglas set out to make what he hoped would be
a trilogy about his childhood the omens could hardly have been
favourable. The setting was Newcraighall, a run-down mining
village to the south-east of Edinburgh: typical of many such
villages in Scotland, with their back-to-back brick-built houses,
bleak surroundings and the refuse bing from the mine just along
the road. Inside the houses were equally austere, especially in the
period of rationing just after World War II. There was nothing
to relieve the gloom, except the director's imagination and the
response he could draw from his players. It was a tough way to
begin.

Bill Douglas had courage and conviction, qualities which have
distinguished all individualists in film-making. Financial help came
from the British Film Institute's Production Board, embarking on its
first feature film. Douglas had had experience of acting in London
as a student with Joan Littlewood and had also had two years at
the London Film School. With this minimal schooling he returned
to the village where he grew up and began work on My Childhood
( 1972). The leading part was played by Stephen Archibald who,
with a fellow pupil, Hugh Resterick, was playing truant on the day
Douglas met them in Edinburgh. The others he recruited included
several with acting experience, Jean Taylor-Smith, Paul Kermack,
Helena Gloag and Eileen McCallum among them.

The trilogy begins in 1945 when there were still German
prisoners-of-war working in the fields. The focus for the action
was the kitchen of the house where Jamie, the central character, lives
with his grandmother and elder brother Tommy. Neither boy is sure
of his parentage but Tommy believes that the man who brings him a
canary for his birthday is his father. The canary, hidden in the cellar,

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