Less than a mile north of Bootle, Liverpool's most lugubrious outreach, the arid suburban plain of Seaforth spreads monotonously along Bridge Road, heading northwards to Waterloo, before reaching the more desirable expanses of Litherland and Crosby. Bordered by the drab waters of the Liverpool–Leeds canal, it was in this distinctly unpromising location that on 9 November 1937 Roger McGough was born in a three-up three-down at 11 Ruthven Road, close to, but the wrong side of, ‘posher parts over the hill’.

The sounds of tugs' foghorns on the Mersey were early memories. They also stimulated images and ideas that were to remain important throughout his life. Snuggled up in bed, these sounds were warm and reassuring to the young McGough, but also mysterious and exciting; both a coming home and a going away. Wartime Liverpool meant nights spent in shelters, foraging for bomb fins in the yard, uncles coming home from the war. It meant hiding in a small room under the stairs in a cot with his sister Brenda, born in 1939. Later it meant collecting bottle tops for the war effort – the debris, the paraphernalia, the insignia of war when ‘all men wore uniforms’ or were either away on service or home on leave. His father, Roger Francis McGough, was one of seven brothers, and young Roger's many uncles would turn up at all hours, often with exciting presents, would talk, smoke Woodbines and stay up late into the night.