Despite one being underage, another travelling on his younger brother's passport (and not looking like him) and a third being on a watchlist, these teenagers were allowed to waltz through Luton airport to travel to Syria at the height of the war. So much for our high class security. The book tells the true story of how these and other disillusioned children from a Brighton I find it hard to recognise became radicalised and travelled to fight Assad and his allies- unsuccessfully as you can imagine. It should be emphasised that this was before the rise of Isis and the boys joined a mixed bag of fighters who like most civilised people were appalled at what the Syrian president was doing to his own people. Prior to their escape, we follow the descent into criminality of many of the boys while a largely hands-off police force and local authority officers compile report after report into their behaviour missing many opportunities to intervene. A sad book which makes you wonder whether presently teenagers are undergoing a similar grooming process