Subrata Dasgupta was six years old when his parents came to Britain from Calcutta in 1950. In his affectionate portrait of a Britain that seems as foreign to us now as it was to him then, he recalls what it was like growing up in Nottingham and Derby in the 1950s: holidays in Blackpool, the trials of the dreaded Eleven-Plus and the first stirrings of rock and roll.

He quickly falls in love with his new country but no one can answer the questions that trouble him most: why can't the British pronounce his name when he can pronounce theirs? Can you be both British and Indian? And can you support two football teams - Blackpool and Derby County - at the same time?

Above all it is the story of one small Indian boy's devotion to the greatest footballer of the day, Stanley Matthews, known as the 'first gentleman of soccer' as he was never booked and never sent off. For Subrata Dasgupta, and for many millions, he represented all that was best about his new country.

Subrata Dasgupta was born in Calcutta in 1943. He lived in Britain from 1950 to 1958. He is currently the Director of the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

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