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Britain’s shameful rioters could learn a lot from Lee Child – and their local library

The author’s Jack Reacher novels may be violent, but he offered a decidingly more optimistic view of Britain’s future on This Cultural Life

A particularly tetchy General Election this summer was swiftly followed by several days of rioting, precipitated by the horrific murders of three girls in Southport. Britain’s self-worth felt at an all-time low, something perhaps best symbolised by supposedly concerned rioters in Liverpool torching a community library, a gargantuan symbolic act of unthinking self-sabotage. A nation of dunces. 
Consider the childhood of Jack Reacher author Lee Child, who spoke last week with John Wilson as the already indispensable This Cultural Life (Radio 4) returned. Even in the bombed-out ruins of postwar Birmingham, there stood a modest library, cherished by the child Child, whose dour “Calvinist” parents allowed him no more pleasure than books. He devoured them in their hundreds. As the library allowed only two books per week, he enforced a “Chicago voting system” in his house, cajoling visitors to get a library card for his benefit. Even the dog had one. 
Some of the thugs who trashed Liverpool’s Spellow Hub would likely enjoy the bone-cracking violence in Child’s Reacher novels, but they’d be missing the point. The books, explained Child, with all their inherent trauma, are guides on how not to live. Recently a burglar in Rome was caught because he sat down to enjoy a volume on Homer’s Iliad while on the job. It’s a nice daydream to imagine one of the Spellow “protesters” alighting across a smouldering copy of Killing Floor and picking up a few tips about decency and protecting the innocent from Child’s nomadic Goliath. Let’s hope the prison library system still functions. 
The 45 minutes with Child made me totally fascinated by a subject I had no previous interest in. Fed by the country’s once-great libraries, Child, 70 this year, is erudite and insightful. Wilson is a canny interviewer, but he barely had to lift a finger as Child laid it all out for him. A Ladybird book of David and Goliath gave him an early taste for siding with the big guy; a picture book about America gave him a roaming yen for the States; his time as a shop steward at Granada TV, and subsequent dismissal, gave him the knack of sticking it to the Man. 
He even revealed, with no prompting from Wilson, that his success now gives him the love he craved, and did not receive, as a boy. Child’s attitude to life – and to art – is to be cherished. It was heartening, and made me reconnect a little with my inner Briton. As did two other programmes this week, on wildly different subjects, both dispiriting in their own way, but capable of making you feel a kinship with your neighbour. 
First was Off-Peak Performance (Radio 4) in which presenter Johnny I’Anson joined in the “Euston Dash” – the mad commuter panic at the London station when the platform is announced for the first northbound off-peak train of the evening. I’Anson sprinted past children to make it. Onboard he found a bleak portrait of the nation’s railways, epitomised by Avanti West Coast’s abject performance – which has recently been ruthlessly punished with a nine-year contract extension. 
However, among all the chaos – on I’Anson’s late-running service he met people missing family dinners, children’s bedtimes and rare time with partners – there was a refreshing sense of stoicism and a sense of humour. One frequent user had, in just 18 months, made enough money back from Delay Repay that he had funded his daughter-in-law’s wedding dress. 
Still, the gloom remained of something terrible becoming the norm. A feeling shared by Dave and Tors, the parents of seven-year-old Nora, in Redzi’s Bernard’s diamond of a mini-series Complex (Radio 4). Nora is disabled and needs round-the-clock care, something Dave and Tors, who narrate the series with grace and composure, are trying to provide against a ghastly system. 
Despite being allowed a £30 k grant from the council to renovate their home to accommodate Nora’s needs, the couple are driving themselves into debt to pay for the work. The £30 k “doesn’t touch the sides”, said Dave. And for those wondering why they should demand so much money from the state or why they don’t put Nora in residential care – one expert explained that for every pound councils spend on home renovation for disabled children, they save five pounds on care. “It’s a topsy turvy world we live in,” he said. 
A topsy turvy country, from Spellow to Avanti West Coast and beyond. A week, then, to be thankful for moments of connection and empathy. To hear the love and care poured into Nora by her indefatigable parents and her marvellous brother Harry, and to hear Nora’s giggles and gurgles, was not only moving, but a reminder that we are not a nation of dunces after all.

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