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A British Childhood

How Our Children Live Now

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A British Childhood

By: Frank Cottrell-Boyce
Narrated by: Frank Cottrell-Boyce
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Read by the author, Frank Cottrell-Boyce.

A British Childhood is at once a searing account of our failure to look after the nation’s most vulnerable citizens, and a call to arms to all of us to protect the innocence of childhood.

During his time as Children’s Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce visited schools that had been forced to make permanent homes in temporary buildings, where teachers doubled up as social workers, therapists and nutritionists. He talked to children abandoned within the prison system, seen to have forfeited their right to the second chance a good education might provide. He met families shuttled from one hotel room to another as they awaited the outcome of asylum decisions. And he talked to the extraordinary array of people working to change the fortunes of the young people around them.

These encounters prompted him to reflect on his own upbringing in Merseyside, the difference literature made to his early years, and how, during his lifetime, childhood in Britain has been transformed. He shows how the connections we make and the sense of community are so vital to our future adult selves, and how, in the twenty-first century, these connections have become increasingly frayed.

Childhood Education Education Political Science Politics & Government Poverty & Homelessness Social Sciences
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Critic reviews

Drawing on stories gathered across the country, alongside memories of his own Liverpool upbringing, Cottrell-Boyce examines what childhood in Britain looks like now. Part memoir, part manifesto, it is especially powerful on poverty, reading and imagination
Lively and frequently moving . . . Some of the book’s most evocative passages recall Cottrell-Boyce’s childhood . . . A British Childhood makes a stirring case for children as central to any national story (Johanna Thomas-Corr)
Frank Cottrell-Boyce (Waterstones Children's Laureate, 2024 - 2026) is an absolute genius (BookTrust)
Frank Cottrell-Boyce is an enchanter
Frank Cottrell Boyce is truly a great champion for children and childhood. His book is a truth-telling, shameful tale of neglect, and yet it is also an anthem of hope and faith that that says we can and must put things right for all our children. No home, no school, and especially no library should be without this story and this book (Michael Morpurgo)
Original, surprising and compassionate without being earnest . . . Frank's book left me enraged, informed and moved (Sathnam Sanghera)
This clarion call about the loss of delight and safety in children’s lives is also a reminder of the sheer magic of reading . . . He makes the case for how British childhood has changed, and why that matters, with trenchancy and heart. The children whose school assemblies he graces are lucky to have him
[Cottrell-Boyce's] urgent and heartfelt new book always feels close to home. There is a wonderful moment early on in that book when all his hunches and instincts about the intangible things he has devoted his life to – family and storytelling and human connection – are given rigorous scientific grounding
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