Скачать или смотреть Seven Children: Danny Dorling and Melissa Benn in conversation

In Seven Children, Danny Dorling, Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford, offers a highly original exploration of inequality and hope through the lens of seven “typical” children. Drawing from millions of statistics, he constructs these children as symbols of the average experience, representing the full spectrum of parental income in the UK, from the poorest to the wealthiest.

Born in 2018, during a time when the UK faced its worst inequality since the Great Depression, these children turned five in 2023, amidst a devastating cost-of-living crisis. Despite the rapid rise in child poverty and the country's growing social divide, this immersive and thought-provoking book reveals that hope can still endure.

Through these seven children, the book explores the complex issues affecting post-pandemic Britain, from the overlooked middle to the extremes of wealth and deprivation. Dorling challenges us to think beyond the narratives of the superrich and the most deprived, asking critical questions about what life is like for the majority of British children, and how we can reverse the damaging trends affecting their future.

Audio recording of a conversation with writer, journalist and campaigner Melissa Benn at the Cambridge Literary Festival on 26 April 2025.

Melissa Benn’s essays and journalism have appeared in a wide range of publications, including The Independent, The Times, LRB, Cosmopolitan, and elsewhere. She is a regular contributor to The Guardian and New Statesman. She has published eight books, including two novels. One of Us, published in 2008, was widely praised and shortlisted for a British Book Award in 2008. In September 2013 she published What Should We Tell Our Daughters? The Pleasures and Pressures of Growing Up Female, an exploration of young women’s lives from the perspective of a mother and feminist in mid-life, which was shortlisted for a Politico’s Book of the Year in 2014.

Read more about Seven Children: Inequality and Britain’s Next Generation
https://www.dannydorling.org/books/se...