Reading DOES change people’s lives …mine was one of them, says Andy McNab
more than 10 million copies of Bravo Two Zero sold to date in the UK alone.
For the past 20 years, the SAS hero has been widening the horizons of non-readers everywhere.
“Reading gives you knowledge, and knowledge gives you power,” says McNab, a tireless campaigner for literacy who was awarded the CBE for his services to literacy and charity in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2017. “I visit prisons, schools and workplaces, and see the difference reading has made.
“Recently, I met a bus driver who could not read, even road signs. He would drive by memory alone, which caused problems when there were roadworks.
“But learning to read didn’t just help him in his work. He can now read to his grandchildren because he started reading by sharing the same bedtime storybooks.
“Some of the prisoners I’ve met couldn’t even read a newspaper and after starting to read have become evangelical.
“It isn’t just because they knew that once released from prison they had to compete for jobs, but they realised there was nothing wrong with them and that they weren’t stupid, as they’d been told.” In Leicester, he met a council worker who couldn’t apply for promotion because he couldn’t read and was unable to fill in the application.
“He put his arm in a sling and went along to answer the questions verbally; that old trick,” he says.
“But the council realised and have now taught him to read. It’s been life-changing for him. It doesn’t matter what you read; whether it’s a book, a billboard or a magazine.
“Learning to read gets things done, and reading means you get to do more of the things you want to do, rather than being told what to do by people with more power than you.
“Books are an agent of change in so many ways.”