Frank Cottrell-Boyce

It has made me good at telling stories about people who have a secret suffering.

And former Children's Laureate Frank Cottrell Boyce.

If art's got one function, it's to point to what's wonderful and say, "Look, this is your world.

It's insane." Listen to This Cultural Life on BBC Sounds.

I remember, because she was in Brookside, wasn't she? She was in there.

And when I did the documentary series about Liverpool, I interviewed Frank Cottrell-Boyce and we showed an excerpt from Brookside.

It's him and her and Ricky Tomlinson.

And they're just talking about... industrial relations, like, for hours.

But I guess I'm joining what I hope is going to be a force of nature that will continue to push forward.

I know Frank Cottrell-Boyce, who is the UK's Children's Poet Laureate, is writing articles in newspapers as he comes to the end of his term, just saying how important it is for children to read.

And I would also say how important it is for children to be read too.

That's where the spark can come from if children are read too regularly.

It's at the Birmingham Midshires Institute.

Great speakers, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, poet Liz Berry, Giles Brandreth, who, of course, is also a patron of ourselves here at Petersfield Museum.

So the Edward Thomas Fellowship, we will have a stall there.

His poetry and he has followers across the country.

Reading to your kids.

From the moment they are born, and I've been reading this book actually by Frank Cottrell Boyce about in the first couple of years, not necessarily reading loads of different books, but the repetition-

Yeah

... of language and...

... for all that is good in the world, as opposed to all that is not good in the world.

Frank Cottrell Boyce, uh, whom you spoke to-

Oh, yeah, he was on the, again, on, on the radio this morning

... wonderfully.