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In this blog founder and director of Reading Force, Alison Baverstock, recalls her personal experience in young adulthood of just how powerful getting a family story down on paper can be… My grandmother would often regale us with the story of her parents. Her mother (my great-grandmother) had eloped, realising that her strict parents would never accept her choice of husband. My grandmother’s grandmother, was furious and never saw her daughter again. But there was a mysterious older man who turned up at her parents’ house at regular intervals. His presence was never explained [...]

A big welcome to our guest blogger Alison David, Consumer Insight Director at HarperCollins Children’s Books and Farshore. In this blog Alison talks about the decline in reading to children and highlights the magic that happens when parents and carers do read to children… Everyone knows it’s important to read to children, but somehow in recent years it has been slipping back, so that now fewer than half (41%) of pre-schoolers are read to every day (down from 64% in 2012). It’s the same pattern with 5-7s: just over a third are read to daily, down [...]

We are over the moon to welcome Janet Ellis - TV presenter, podcaster, and author - as our new Reading Force patron. In this blog Janet recalls the comfort of books in her military childhood and beyond…AUTOBAHN. That was one of first words I remember reading aloud, as we zipped along a German motorway. I was four years old, sitting in the back of the family car, my Sapper dad at the wheel. It was a revelation that words could somehow get into my head and I could make sense of them. The anodyne contents of the Janet [...]

Former Royal Air Force Chinook Pilot and Training Captain, Leon Fisher, served from 1999 until 2015, completing five tours in Afghanistan. His service included high-stakes roles such as being part of the Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT), tasked with retrieving injured soldiers from the battlefield. After being medically discharged due to PTSD in 2015, Leon began a new chapter—this time, supporting others by joining military charity, Vector24. We spoke to him about how he heard about Reading Force and how it has transformed his own reading journey with his young daughter. Discovering Reading Force Though vaguely aware [...]

We’re thrilled to welcome back Lorraine as a guest blogger! We love Weebert’s world and adventures and Lorraine’s amazing story which is hugely inspiring to all military spouses… For 27 years, I was an army wife – packing, moving, and holding down the fort while my husband was away. My life was measured in school terms, birthdays, and bank holidays – each one a countdown to his return. Military life is a cycle of goodbyes and fresh starts, making me resilient but also leaving me with a question: When would it be my turn? Like so many [...]

In response to world events there’s been increasing discussion about putting ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine. Reaction from the military community will likely be varied: trying to anticipate who will be going; wondering when and what will be the impact on your own family; anxiously watching the debate develop in the media. In the process, difficulties in both recruitment and retention into the UK’s Armed Forces are being highlighted, and questions asked about how big our military needs to be. A recent Radio 4 investigation muddled the two and missed an opportunity to consider issues of [...]

Forces Children Scotland are delighted to share new tailored digital support to help children and young people overcome unique deployment challenges. Find out more in this blog… Deployment can sometimes bring feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, and isolation. Consultations with children and young people from armed forces families, led by Forces Children Scotland, evidenced a need for a child-friendly resource with easily accessible information. Judith Blair, Learning and Development worker for Forces Children Scotland had this to say about the creation of the new resource: “Funding from the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust and BFBS Big Salute has [...]

In this special guest blog, Rhian reveals her close to home inspiration for the story… My great-aunt Audrey revealed her career as a code-breaker one Sunday lunchtime, in a pub in Wales, when a family member made an incorrect statement about Bletchley Park. Before this, if asked about her war work, Audrey would have replied, just as she’d been trained to do, “Admin. Nothing exciting.” When Audrey was queried about her seemingly impossible knowledge about somewhere in England (of all places!) called Bletchley Park, she stood up and announced to her family, and the whole pub, that she [...]

Hosted Saturday 8th February 2025, by Alison Baverstock I guess you know a conference programme is working well when the speakers arrive early, reference each other in their own presentations, and then stay on to join in. This lovely email came afterwards from one of them. ‘I enjoyed the whole day. What you are doing is really worthwhile. A good deal of it was relevant to some of the things I want to do. The bits that weren’t were just plain interesting.’ I have long taught in a university, and we teach students to ‘deconstruct’. In other words, [...]

In a bid to foster community and connection, Reading Force is partnering with veteran organisations across the country to launch book clubs, forging new friendships through the shared love of reading. One such organisation, Veterans Outreach Support (VOS) in Portsmouth, has embraced this initiative with open arms. A New Chapter for VOS The VOS book club, part of the charity’s comprehensive wellbeing programme, kicked off late last year with their first three reads provided by Reading Force. We had the pleasure of speaking with Alison, a member who found the courage to [...]