In A British Childhood Frank Cottrell-Boyce tells the story of what it means to be young in Britain today and the consequences of growing up at the sharp end of two major crises – the pandemic and austerity. During his time as Children’s Laureate he 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 are increasingly frayed.

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.