# The Book Club: How Our Children Live Now

An episode of [Best of the Spectator](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/793236670), 17 Jun 2026, 34 min.

Audio: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68358fb5e1abc4be6b0308eb/e/6a3277270eff8315215b76bd/media.mp3?tk=eyJ0ayI6ImRlZmF1bHQiLCJhZHMiOnRydWUsInNwb25zIjp0cnVlLCJzdGF0dXMiOiJwdWJsaWMifQ==&sig=hDj07hmtmE0IXeMo_XtW-czLrOXgfNIE7pmykwKulHs

My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the Children’s Laureate, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, whose new book, A British Childhood: How Our Children Live Now, describes what he discovered from the travels he undertook during his work with BookTrust and the Laureateship. He tells me what he learned about what really happens when a parent reads to a child, why the crisis in childhood reading is down to much more than the rise of screens – and how Heidi can save your life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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