A British Childhood

Our children have been at the sharp end of two major crises – the pandemic and austerity. Any crisis is like a barium meal, illuminating the weak spots in the body of the state . . .

During his time as Children’s Laureate, the bestselling author Frank Cottrell-Boyce travelled the country, meeting children and young people where they were: in schools and libraries, in young offenders’ institutions and prisons, many of them living in extremely precarious conditions.

As he met these children he began to reflect on his own childhood and on children’s lives in Britain during his lifetime – the connections we make and the sense of community that are so vital to our future adult selves. And he sees how, in the twenty-first century, these connections and communities are increasingly frayed.

A British Childhood tells the story of what it means to be young in modern Britain. It is at once a searing condemnation 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.