Books v Screens: Why Every School Needs a Library (Katherine Rundell)
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 7 August 2025
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:04.9 | Hello, it's Amol here. |
| 0:06.1 | Welcome back, I hope, to radical conversations about the deep global trends that are shaping this crazy era in human history. |
| 0:14.0 | And hopefully offering you, me and everyone who comes on this show, a safe space to encounter, |
| 0:19.1 | to challenge the radical ideas that you need to win the future. |
| 0:23.4 | In this episode, we're talking about reading, words, literacy, and why is it that only one |
| 0:29.1 | in three, eight to 18 year olds in this country say they enjoy reading in their spare time? |
| 0:35.2 | One in three, one in three, eight to 18 year olds say they enjoy reading in their spare time. One in three, one in three, eight to 18 year olds say they enjoy |
| 0:38.5 | reading in their spare time. And this whole issue of literacy and why it is that reading seems to be |
| 0:44.5 | in sustained, if not terminal decline, especially among young people, is something which is rising up |
| 0:50.2 | the political agenda. So the UK government has now declared that 2026 will be the national |
| 0:55.8 | year of reading. And what they want to do is encourage parents like me to read to their children |
| 1:00.8 | and to try and renew the family hubs that were based on the Shawstart model pioneered by |
| 1:06.6 | new labour. And if you're looking for someone to really champion the idea that reading, that books, |
| 1:12.9 | that words should be central to every single childhood, and that books can transform, not just |
| 1:17.6 | individual lives, but whole worlds, well, this week's guest is someone who has spent a lifetime |
| 1:22.7 | doing just that. She is a hugely successful academic and also best-selling children's author. It is |
| 1:30.3 | Catherine Rundle. She's got some pretty radical ideas about what we could do to get kids reading. Catherine, how are you? |
| 1:51.5 | I'm well, I'm so delighted to be here. |
| 1:53.7 | Very nice to see you. |
| 1:54.7 | What's it like writing books that people actually read? |
| 1:58.2 | And millions of people read and have become, and what's it like to be called a cult author? |
... |
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