This isn’t over sentimental and Hudson doesn’t dwell too long on individual aspects. The Britain portrayed here is dystopian, a nightmare of poverty, abuse and mindless bureaucracy.

The descriptions are at times grim as were the effects on Hudson and she is very open about the effects her upbringing still has on her current life as a writer. She recalls time spent there and revisits, sometimes meeting people who remember her. Hudson goes back (literally) to the places of her childhood which include Aberdeen, Canterbury, Airdrie, North Shields, Coatbridge, Great Yarmouth and Hetton. “1 single mother, 2 stays in foster care, 9 primary schools, 1 sexual abuse child protection enquiry, 5 high schools, 2 sexual assaults, 1 rape, 2 abortions, my 18th birthday.” This is a compelling account of what it is like to grow up in poverty in Britain, what it is like to be on the margins of society in an unstable household. She also journeys into the hardest regions of her own childhood, because sometimes in order to move forwards we first have to look back.

Lowborn is Kerry’s exploration of where she came from, revisiting the towns she grew up in to try to discover what being poor really means in Britain today and whether anything has changed. But she often finds herself looking over her shoulder, caught somehow between two worlds. She has a secure home, a loving partner and access to art, music, film and books. She’s a prizewinning novelist who has travelled the world. Twenty years later, Kerry’s life is unrecognisable. She scores eight out of ten on the Adverse Childhood Experiences measure of childhood trauma. Always on the move with her single mother, Kerry attended nine primary schools and five secondaries, living in B&Bs and council flats. The poverty she grew up in was all-encompassing, grinding and often dehumanising. Kerry Hudson is proudly working class but she was never proudly poor. 'When every day of your life you have been told you have nothing of value to offer, that you are worth nothing to society, can you ever escape that sense of being ‘lowborn’ no matter how far you’ve come?’ What does it really mean to be poor in Britain today? A prizewinning novelist revisits her childhood and some of the country's most deprived towns

Lowborn by Kerry Hudson