It was a book that became a sensation — but not in a way its author could have predicted. Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, Kate Clanchy’s memoir of her 35-year teaching career, was published in 2019. Teachers raved about it, critics loved it. The Times of London said it was “one of the most uplifting books you will ever read”. The writer Philip Pullman said it should be in every staffroom. In 2020 the judges of the Orwell prize said it was a book in which “a brilliantly honest writer tackles a subject that ties so many people up in knots — education and how it is inexorably dominated by class”, as they gave her their award for that year.
That was before the book was engulfed in an almighty Twitter storm, before it was accused of being racist and ableist, before it became a symbol of everything that was wrong with publishing as a whole.
