Only one in three children in the UK enjoy reading in their spare time – the lowest rate recorded in 20 years, according to a survey for the National Literacy Trust.
Best-selling children’s author Katherine Rundell, whose books include Impossible Creatures and The Explorer, says that represents a crisis of reading which will make it harder to tackle disinformation.
She thinks every school should have a library that is subject to an Ofsted inspection and literacy should be included in teacher training programmes to try to tackle the decline in children reading for pleasure.
Amol and Katherine also discuss why Donald Trump’s re-election as US president led her to donate all the royalties from US sales of The Golden Mole (published under the title Vanishing Treasures in America) to climate charities.
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Episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan are released every Thursday and you can also watch them on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002f1d0/radical-with-amol-rajan
Amol Rajan is a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He is also the host of University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was media editor at the BBC and editor at The Independent.
Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast. It was made by Lewis Vickers with Izzy Rowley. Digital production was by Gabriel Purcell-Davis. Technical production was by James Piper. The editor is Sam Bonham. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths.