A British Childhood: How Our Children Live Now

Capturing stories from homes, libraries, schools and streets across the country, interspersed with reminiscences from his own Liverpool childhood and anecdotes from his time as Waterstones Children’s Laureate, Cottrell-Boyce portrays the realities of contemporary childhood in 21st-century Britain in this heartfelt and often deeply concerning part-memoir, part-manifesto. Unsurprisingly, access to books and reading is a central preoccupation, and I now cannot stop thinking about the fact that being deprived of bedtime stories is not just about a lack of books. Due to bed poverty, charity Time for Bed gave out 582 actual beds in Merseyside last year.