Partly inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s short story of the same name, The Childhood Of A Leader is a tense psychological drama tracing the formative years of a young boy and set against the backdrop of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference that led to the establishment of the Treaty of Versailles. Walker continues to work with long-term collaborators Peter Walsh (co-producer) and Mark Warman (musical director), with the latter conducting an orchestra comprised of 46 string players and 16 brass for the studio recording.

Punk visual culture was immediate, ephemeral and transitory, defying claims to longevity and to seriousness. It would be no surprise then that this visual culture would draw on the comic strip – the almost archetypal instance of a transitory and debased form for the usual arbiters of culture.