Five young men, all sons of pitmen in the Rhondda valley, born in the 1930s recount the story of their teenage years in the 1940s. Their world then is now a vanished time, a time of near poverty and danger. Their experiences were similar but each was determined to escape a life working underground and this they achieved. Though a group of friends they went on to take very different routes in life: each achieved later success but in very different fields: one became the chief executive of a borough council, another a BBC producer travelling the world, a third becoming a lawyer and prolific novelist. One of the friends worked in the nuclear industry, another became a respected headmaster working largely in schools overseas. In Children of the Thirties they describe the years of their development, memories of the war and the manner in which they progressed in their chosen careers: an how, over their lifetimes they have maintained the friendships that began in the late 1940s.