Routes 1940-75 is both a personal and public memoir; it is personal as it records part of Robert Yeo’s life for the first thirty-five years, and it is public as it follows his response to some of the tumultuous events of the period at the local, regional and international levels. Personally, what happened to his family of five living in Hougang when his father passed away at a relatively young age? Publicly, where was he on the day Singapore separated from Malaysia on August 9, 1965? What was he doing in swinging London in the sixties? And on Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok in the seventies? In revealing skeletons in the cupboard through letters, diaries, extract from his poems, plays and fiction, Yeo presents an unvarnished account of one person’s story of his country’s emergence from third to first world. The inclusion of more than a hundred illustrations enhances the intriguing prose.