Boy

One Child's Fight to Survive in the Brutal British Care System

Nigel Cooper

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English

Ebury Press
15 September 2015

Memoirs; Child abuse; Age groups: children

"The deeply moving story of one child's courage to survive in care in 1970s Britain

""My parents had to try for eighteen months to conceive me, but my father was adamant he wanted one last child. After eighteen months of trying, my mother eventually conceived and nine months later I was born. My birth was a difficult one. It was like I was never meant to be in this world.""Boy is Nigel Cooper's memoir from the age of five to sixteen. It tells the shocking, brutal, disturbing, emotional story of his childhood spent in and out of various care homes and institutions during the 1970s and 1980s.

When Nigel was just seven years old, after the untimely death of his sister and father, his mother asked social services to take him away - and then his nightmare began. For the next nine years of his life, Nigel was repeatedly rejected by his mother and spent his childhood among bullies, abusers, psychopaths and criminals. He spent time in a children's psychiatric hospital, where they carried out unimaginable tests, pumped him full of drugs and physically abused him; care homes, where he would come face to face with rough estate kids who would beat him up, force him to steal for them and threaten his life; and barbaric assessment centres for disturbed and delinquent children, where the staff were, at times, sicker than the children.

The system tried to break Nigel and it was a miracle that he survived. The British care system robbed him of his childhood. His story is truly extraordinary and will do a lot more than shed light on what it was like growing up during the Jimmy Savile years.

Boy is powerfully written, edgy, gripping and beautifully crafted."

By: Nigel Cooper
Imprint: Ebury Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 126mm, Spine: 21mm
Weight: 229g
ISBN: 9781785030789
ISBN 10: 1785030787
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 15 September 2015
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

After spending nine years in the British care system, Nigel went on to educate himself and become an author of contemporary fiction and crime. He found his voice as the editor of his own magazine, which he ran for eight years. Prior to this he studied screenwriting in London. He also has a wealth of experience as a freelance journalist, writing articles and stories for numerous magazines and newspapers. Boy is his first non-fiction book.