The British “children’s laureate”, Malorie Blackman,  says  she wants children to read more, but talks about how, as a young black girl, she felt “totally invisible in the world of literature”; and how, when studying history, she had wanted to learn something that “felt more relevant” than the Tudors.

This is nonsense. People don’t, or shouldn’t, read to “self identify”, but to explore the world and understand the feelings, emotions and thoughts of others. The best books speak to all readers in a way that transcends such details as ethnic identity or gender.

My specialist subject at university was Russia. I loved the writings of the great Russian authors such as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky,  but never felt alienated because I wasn’t Russian Prince with serfs, or because I didn’t even speak Russian.  I was interested in Russian history, the reasons for the expansion of its empire, the human motivations behind it, and  the many people who oppose the Tsars.  It  is not history’s job to be “relevant” to us.  History is about the study human beings and what makes them tick.  Henry VIII was a thug, but what he did he did for the peace of a country that had recently emerged from a long civil war, and for whom peace was an imperative.  To make history a narrow race or ethnic matter cramps a child’s curiosity and fails in one important matter  – to allow you to understand how the country you live in traveled to where it is now. Without that understanding of where you have come from you have no idea where you  going.

As  Howard Jacobson in The Independent said on this matter, “Take the relevance route and you don’t educate, you disinherit”.

By the way, what does a ” children’s laureat do anyway?