A British Childhood : How Our Children Live Now

Author: Frank Cottrell-Boyce

United Kingdom, Great Britain

Published on 18 June 2026 by PAN MACMILLAN (Picador) in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 208 pages
143 x 224 x 21 | 306g

'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' - Guardian 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 stories from his own childhood and on children’s lives in Britain during his lifetime – the imaginative connections we make and the sense of community that are so vital to our future adult selves.

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 aftfter the nation’s most vulnerable citizens, and a call to arms to all of us to protect the innocence, and the imagination, of childhood.

'Especially powerful on poverty, reading and imagination' - The i