Frank Cottrell-Boyce has revealed how a visit to a Bootle school, where he learned some children had no beds, inspired his new book on modern childhood. The 67-year-old author spoke to the ECHO in an exclusive interview ahead of his talk at the Liverpool Literary Festival on October 18.
Encounter at a Bootle school
The Bootle-born writer, who has won a BAFTA and helped write the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, said the encounter happened while he was talking about bedtime stories. He said: "The teacher pulled me aside and said there are several kids in this class who don't have beds."
He added: "I'm going around this city thinking, 'Isn't this great and hasn't it changed?' But there's hundreds of kids in this city without beds. How has that happened? It's really basic things."
Criticism of austerity
Frank, who served as children's laureate, said his travels to schools, prisons and hospitals made him "very optimistic about the great work that people are doing with our children, but also very angry about what we, as a nation, are doing for our children, which is pretty much nothing."
He argued that austerity measures introduced by the Conservative government in the 2010s were a turning point. He said: "Austerity was a war on children. What we have lost is a lot of public spaces. Parks and clubs were safe. All these things that were closed down during austerity."
He also highlighted the removal of the Sure Start programme, saying: "We did have an infrastructure in place for this, which was called Sure Start, which worked brilliantly. It wasn't perfect, but it was very good. And it was just removed during austerity."
Southport riots influence
The book is centred on Merseyside, and Frank said he started writing it "under the shadow of the Southport riots two years ago and the burning down of Spellow Library. Kids had been murdered and the only reaction was meaningless, recreational, right wing rioting."
Despite the dark subject matter, he said the book is "also very optimistic, but because I've seen tons of great practice. A lot of this book is about Liverpool, or about certainly about the metropolitan areas where really amazing work has been done."
Frank, who lives in Crosby and was awarded Honorary Freedom of the Borough of Sefton in 2026, said Liverpool's character is defined by a constant question: "What difference are you going to make?" He recalled a favourite encounter when a young girl on County Road recited Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky poem to him, saying: "I'd rather have that than an Oscar."
His talk, A British Childhood with Frank Cottrell-Boyce, takes place at the Victoria Gallery & Museum on Sunday, October 18.
