What Do Boys Want?

Why I Never Wanted a Doll

What makes a boy tick? Has our view of boys evolved as society has changed? Is boyishness in the genes or learned after birth?

John Redwood shares with the reader his experiences as a young boy growing up in post War Britain when boys were told to be boys. With an unusually long memory of childhood stretching for him back into the pram he takes us through what it felt like to be a baby then a boy responding to the adult world around him. Sitting on a chair was an exercise in mountaineering. Trying those first steps instead of crawling fast around the floors were dogged by fears of falling over. First day at school was a revelation putting him into a world that was made for his size and understanding. Listening to little understood adult conversations over his head and trying to respond to well-meant remarks was difficult to handle.

He reminds readers of the close relationships young boys have with their mothers, charged with keeping them out of harm all day long. He identifies crucial events and conversations that took him step by step to independent judgement and eventually to a scholarship to Oxford which changed his life.

John Redwood is a businessman by background who has led industrial companies and set up an investment management business. An MP since 1987, he has been a government Minister and was Head of Margaret Thatcher's Policy Unit in her middle period in office.