His own upbringing in north London in the 1970s and 80s was fairly ordinary, save for his father, a Second World War Bomber Command pilot turned maths teacher and headmaster, who inspired a love of storytelling. “The memories you have when you fell over and cut your leg really badly and your ankle went round the wrong way, that’s the kind of thing you remember.” At the same time, no one is going to remember when they’re 30, 40 or 50, that wonderful moment they got to level 18 on a season of Fortnite. I’ve got four kids of my own you don’t want them to run wild in case they don’t come back. You’ve got to find some way of getting kids to make great memories without putting themselves in danger. “But none of the people I actually meet seem to have that kind of sensibility. Maybe there is a group in the middle I missed,” he says. My kids, the oldest is 20, the youngest is 13, seem ever so tough-minded. “The ones I taught 20 years ago were pretty resilient. All of which makes you wonder quite what that original publisher thinks now.īut the former English teacher, who became a full-time writer after his first historical bestseller, The Gates Of Rome, was published in 2002 following years of rejections, doesn’t subscribe to claims of a “snowflake” generation. To date, the book has sold seven million copies around the world, inspiring dozens of imitations and a TV series, while being praised for its stance against overly-protective “cotton wool” parenting.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |