The Dad Chronicles

By Chris Livemore My biggest critics for The Good Knight books have always been my two eldest children - a highly critical 5-year old and the 'laughter-in-chief' advisor in the form of my 2 1/2 year old. So after endless editing, countless rewrites and medieval silliness I was absolutely thrilled that for months all they wanted to hear before bedtime were the adventures of a brave little knight, a lovable dragon and a fearless princess. Surely this was going to be enough to k

For the last year or so, my wife and I try and take our children to the local library before their weekly swimming lesson. And each week they disappear into the picture book shelves within about thirty seconds, foraging for the good stuff! Usually one comes back carrying a book about dragons or knights (don't know where that influence comes from!) and the other somehow finds a book about sharks the size of a small bus.

By Chris Livemore "Everyone has a plan, til they get punched in the mouth" - Mike Tyson. I feel that famous quote applies extremely well to children's bedtimes... I wish I had this information approximately three years ago, before I discovered (the hard way) that the phrase "right, it is bedtime" functions far less as an actual instruction and much more as a starting pistol for the most elaborate series of delaying tactics that the entire history of human civilisation has eve

The 5 best medieval films that you can watch on VHS or DVD - Excalibur, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Braveheart and A Knight's Tale.

According to the National Literacy Trust, (NLT) just 1 in 3 children and young people aged 8 to 18 said they enjoyed reading in their free time in 2025. That is the lowest level recorded since the NLT began tracking reading enjoyment twenty years ago. Even more striking: reading enjoyment among children has fallen by 36% since 2005. Read that again for a moment.

By Chris Livemore I can't lie. This one was entirely my fault and I’m not even able to partially shift the blame. Nobody asked me to explain what a shield wall was. Nobody knew what a shield wall was. Nobody cared what a shield was. Nobody except me. My two eldest children were perfectly happy hitting each other with sofa cushions — randomly, enthusiastically, and without any tactical structure whatsoever. I introduced the tactical structure. And then they joined forces. It

It was a relatively normal morning, getting the middle child off to nursery after a 5.12am wakeup call to request an episode of Paw Patrol (or maybe Blaze and the Monster Machines) Rushing home to my five-year old daughter who looked at me with a warm, loving smile and then asked... "Daddy, what was it like growing up in the olden days?" That question hurt. I want to be clear that I am not old, well not in the grand scale of things anyway. Admittedly, I do have a mortgage, I

It was a Saturday morning. The coffee hadn’t quite kicked in. There hadn't been much sleep for the last week or two (or come to think of it, since January 2021 - must be a coincidence that my eldest was born then). I was attempting to hand a new picture on the wall by the stairs. It dropped. It partially broke. DIY is not my strong point. Before my brain had time to intervene, a few words came out of my mouth that absolutely should not have done, lucily all of my children we