A Clip of Steel was first published in 1969, when Thomas Blackburn was fifty-three years old. He had often explored the traumas of his childhood and early life in his poetry, but in this memoir he tells the story in its terrifying entirety. He called the work 'a picaresque autobiography' and in a writing style that races you through the pages, he confronts his own and his family's demons with humour, compassion and not a trace of self-pity. By the end of the book he seems to have more or less survived the experience of growing up, while we, his readers, emerge wide-eyed with incredulity, blinking into the ordinary daylight of our lives. This edition includes a new introduction by the author's daughter, Julia Blackburn.