That was a real challenge, to get that across and still make it light and yet informative. This book is helping to understand complexity, but I didn’t want to get into too much of the detail of this. You know, the world is a beautiful place and children often know that. And also, not to inadvertently say something which might be too broad and insulting. To boil that down without oversimplifying it was a real challenge. The two different chapters are dealing with colonialism and religious divisions and, let’s be fair, troubling times. Probably those on the Middle East and Africa. What was the hardest chapters for you to write? I can see myself when I’m nine or ten year’s old happily sitting down for several hours on a rainy afternoon and just pouring through this and using it as jumping off point for a million other things. And then the following page will give you more pictures and contextual text. There’s text alongside it, it’s telling you more about what you are looking at. You know, you’re not just looking at a map. I love the idea of it because there are children who are captivated by maps, and so here is a way of engaging them but giving those maps the context they require. Well I was led, happy to be led, by my publishers Elliot and Thompson because this is not something I am an expert in.

So why this style of children’s books, with maps and facts, not games aiding the development of the senses?

And so, I took that concept and thought, well, you know, if young people are inspired by what I hope is an accessible approach to these big issues, perhaps younger minds could be as well.

An undergraduate might come and say: ‘oh I read Prisoners of Geography at school and it inspired me to study geography,’ or maybe international relations at university. When I was giving talks at schools or unis or book fairs or whatever, I had this amazing response over and over again. Obviously, all sorts of people bought it. I had this terrific response to the original publication from people taking their GCSEs and A-levels. Was it always the plan to write a children’s book? Prisoners of Geography: Our World Explained in 12 Simple Maps

Prisoners of geography