The book includes photographs. The book follows the course of Neill's life sequentially from his youth in "rural, Calvinist Scotland" to the start of Summerhill between the two World Wars. Hemmings focuses on Neill's relation to education but also minds other biographical detail: the influence of Freudian psychoanalysis and Homer Lane's theories in the 1920s, and of Wilhelm Reich's psychological theories in the 1930s. Hemmings compares Neill's thought with that of Maria Montessori, Bertrand Russell, Fred Clarke, Erich Fromm, Susan Sutherland Isaacs, Benjamin Spock, and contemporaries Paul Goodman, Ivan Illich, R. D. Laing, and Herbert Marcuse. Compared to pedagogues such as Russell, who advocated for the inculcation of certain virtues in a child's education, Neill instead insisted that the child be left to make its own values and decisions apart from adult influence and manipulation. Hemmings also reviews the roles of freedom, authority, and anarchy throughout the maturation of Neill's thought. The final sections explain Summerhill's internal processes, philosophy, and position in both British and global social order. Hemmings contends that Summerhill has remained consistent to its principles while it cycled through roles as one of many 1920s educational experiments, a bastion in the 1930s, and an advocate for "children's freedom" throughout the post-World War II movement for informal' education". Hemmings conducted a study that surveyed 102 progressive heads—broadly defined—of infant, elementary, and secondary schools about Neill's influence. Their responses indicated that Neill had significant impact on how the profession perceived teacher–pupil relations. The respondents also reported significant influence from Neill on moral and sex education. Contrarily, Neill had little impact on school curriculum and classroom teaching methods. Hemmings received little response from heads of state comprehensive schools. Hemmings had previously taught at Summerhill. In 1973, he was lecturer in Education at the University of Leicester. Other contemporaneous and significant biographies of Neill include Neill's autobiography ("Neill! Neill! Orange Peel!", 1972) and Robert Skidelsky's Part Three of "English Progressive Schools" (1969). Jonathan Croall's "Neill of Summerhill" (1983) later cited Hemmings's book. Though Hemmings did not think of his work as a biography, Richard L. Hopkins ("Comparative Education Review") said it essentially was strongest as one.