What would you find if you went back and reread all of your favourite books from childhood? Discover the delight and sadness Francis Spufford found as he did just that. As he explores the many worlds that reading can take you to and investigates the literary origins and rich histories of his childhood library, Francis wonders whether we should always indulge our inordinate craving for narrative.
Francis Spufford is author of I May Be Some Time, a cultural history of the British obsession with polar exploring, The Child That Books Built, a memoir of a childhood as a compulsive reader, and Backroom Boys, a portrait of de-industrialisation as seen through the experience of engineers. He sees non-fiction as a literature which is as rich and important as the novel, and as open to ambitious thinking.
