Two football teams attracting home crowds of seventy thousand. Large tracts of the inner city lying in ruins after wartime bombing. Buildings blackened with soot deposits. Tramcars rattling around the city centre. Traffic lights yet to be installed. Miles of docks lining the waterfront. A constable guarding each dock gate. A hut providing shelter for the checking of paperwork.

"What are you doing in the hut?" the patrolling sergeant would bellow when he found a bobby sneaking respite from a howling gale.

This was the Liverpool in which the author of this memoir started his police career in 1951.