School's out! Those final clangings of the bell, when summer term ended and you walked out through the gates into freedom, were some of the most sublime moments of childhood.

From the author of the beloved Terms & Conditions comes this highly entertaining, joyous and sometimes wistful chronicle of the Great British Childhood Summer: Julys and Augusts when the conforming term-time self was cast off and you could become the person you really were. Could it be that those unscheduled days were in fact the most important and formative of our lives?

'I defy anyone who lived in it not to be irresistibly transported back to their eight-year-old self, reliving the wild, eccentric, poor-yet-rich fun of pre-internet, pre-neurotic-parented childhood. This is a joyous book, one to make you smile in recognition, yearn to talk to your best pals from the time and wish to record your own memories' Melanie Reid, The Times

'[A] joyously addictive history of British summer holidays . . . Maxtone Graham is a wonderfully spry and eloquent writer . . . she has a fine ear for others' words - and a high sense of comedy' Laura Cumming, Observer

'British Summer Time Begins is shot through with brilliant phrases and vignettes that have nothing and everything to do with the subject at hand . . . I wonder whether Maxtone Graham has founded a new school of historical writing' Tom Crewe, London Review of Books