William Boyd has been writing popular, prize-winning fiction since Penguin published A Good Man in Africa in 1981. His fiction is often a revealing excavation of an individual life, and in Protobiography, part of which has previously only been privately published, Boyd turns to his own biography for inspiration by exploring his childhood in West Africa and his schooling in Scotland.

I developed a curious relationship with one of the matrons. I can't remember her name but she was attractive, energetic and a little plump with reddish blonde hair and a nicely cynical, gently mocking way with her charges. I can see her face in my mind's eye, see her in her white coat serving spoonfuls of malt to the needy and malnourished, dispensing aspirins for imagined headaches. In our pre-teens the female members of staff played a far more important part in our lives than the males did. I can bring all these young woman to mind instantly, have them fixed in my memory far more vividly than all but a few of the men, It was as if we unconsciously realised that here was the only likely source of any vaguely maternal affection - a smile, a pat on the back, a literal shoulder to cry on - which we all, even the most rambunctious and independent spirits, separated from our real mothers three months at a time, periodically craved.

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